His Ardor: A Meitantei Holmes Fanfic PART 4
by AmberPalette
Summary: New installment of a series in which Hound and Moriarty must team up against Jack the Ripper, but discover that the mystery that really stumps them is romantic entanglement.


His Ardor: Part 4

A Sherlock Hound/Meitantei Holmes Fanfiction

By Amber C.S. ("ProfessorA")

Disclaimer:

**_This work is a hodgepodge of various canonical and alternate universe sources:_****  The Sherlock Holmes mysteries by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (most specifically "The Sign of Four," "A Study In Scarlet," "A Scandal In Bohemia," and "The Final Problem"), the Basil Rathbone film "Terror By Night," the Hayao Miyazaki television series "Sherlock Hound," the Hallmark/Artisan Entertainment Sherlock Holmes miniseries, and especially the Steven Spielberg film "Young Sherlock Holmes."**

**The character "Lola," Heaven's Gate, and the Blue Raven Tavern are creations of webmaster and fan author "HoBS/Capper/Knupfel" and are used with permission.  **

**All characters aside the historically infamous figure "Jack the Ripper" and my fancharacter "Katherine Ferrell" (who is © ME) are copyright Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; in the case of Dr. Waxflatter and Elizabeth Hardy, Mrs. Dribb and the Rhamme Tep, Steven Spielberg; or, in the case of Polly, Todd and Smiley, Hayao Miyazaki.  All information regarding Jack the Ripper is taken from the accredited website "Casebook: Jack the Ripper," located at **the Casebook: Jack the Ripper website.  I am sorry I can't post the URL, but every time I do my document won't upload correctly here.  Suffice to say all of the knowledge comes from this site and is legitimate.  **_Due to recent research, the date of this fanfiction has been changed from 1904 to 1891, as the final Ripper killing is speculated to have taken place in London in April of 1891.  Sorry for the inaccurate previous time setting! _****_J_********__**

**_WARNING: This is the most "intense" of all installments in this series.  Memories of trauma experienced by Professor Moriarty in this particular chapter include graphic situations and are unsuitable for children under 13.  PLEASE SELECT READING AUDIENCES RESPONSIBLY.  Thanks! _**

**__**

"Now that we are alone," purred Irene Adler, slinking onto Sherlock Holmes's down mattress, "I shall speculate your intentions.  You want me to help you costume and conceal yourself and your motives such that you can bring this notorious Ripper fellow to English justice, eh?" She removed her heeled shoes slowly, massaging the soles of her bare feet. Smiling at him. 

Holmes closed his bedroom door, hiding their parlay from his other guests.  From the world entire.  He swallowed, watching his feminine sparring partner's dress catch on his wool blankets and ride up at her slender calves, all the way to her knees.  Watched her trim little muscles tensing under her gossamer pantyhose as she curled her legs into a defensive squat.  Then they disappeared again under her red satin dress, modestly as the legs of a nun.  Taunting him.  He had expected her to seduce him the first moment they were in privacy, just for sport—but she was ready to spring out the window: probably capable, too, of climbing down the tree outside and escaping through Mrs. Hudson's garden should he try to lay a finger on her.  She had her honor, and she would defend it.  The revelation relieved, impressed, and disappointed him. 

"You have inferred my intentions wisely, my dear Irene," he replied. 

"Are you speaking to my thighs or to my face, sir?" she queried disdainfully.

He gulped, head snapping up to face her eye-to-eye.  "My apologies.  Perhaps I am still simply too shocked by the realization that the only person that ever evaded my clutches is sitting before me once again, _fully _at my mercy, and yet . . ."  He strode towards her, gently, as one would approach a wary tigress, "and yet with such full _faith _in her _own_ capacities that at any moment she could escape _again_.  You are both admirable and irksome, milady.  It is a difficult thing for a man who is unused to being taken aback." 

"Indeed."  Irene stood on Holmes's bed, suddenly several feet taller than him.  She removed her gloves, tossed them to his floor, and planted her hands on her hips.  The act didn't strike him with a sense of domination; rather, it only increased the graceful power infused in her presence.  Authority flattered her.  "Right, then. I agree to offer you what talent and skill you see in me."

"Thank you."

"Certainly.  But the real question, Mr. Holmes, is whether my professional labors are _all_ that you expect me to offer you."  Here she dropped to her knees, and at last, in every way, they were equal.  "For you and I have . . .quite a history, do we not?"

A long silence passed between them.  " . . . you are not the first to have won me," he parried at last. 

 "But I _have _won you. I have."

"Completely, my cruel muse."  His face betrayed no emotion while he droned his conclusion. Heartfelt words, but they sounded so bizarre when uttered so lifelessly.  "But _I_ have loved _another_ _more_.  With every fiber that was in me.  And I _lost_ her.  Logically, I should not want to endure such pain again.  So it does not matter whether I expect—or _want_—more of you than that which is professional."

"No more risks, Sherlock?"  Irene drew so close to the detective's face that he could smell her neck, the lavender perfume.  Her breath, the scent of Mrs. Hudson's buttered biscuits and honey, stirred his unkempt hair away from his glinting gray eyes.  "I have loved and lost too, you know.  Perhaps you cannot see it, but I loved Godfrey while he lived.  Ours was more than a marriage of convenience, a means for my escape.  His death, by those cold-blooded . . .but enough of that.  Enough, now.  I loved and lost too.  That is the crux of it.  But I shan't let it _entrap_ me.  Love is not meant that way.  So I pose the question once more:  Do you want more of me than you have proposed?"

Holmes's lips quirked. His breathing quickened.  "What will you do . . . if I say yes?  If I _relinquish_, milady?  Will you say yes, too?"  She felt something warm and firm encircling her hands—his own.  "What if for a _single instant_ we were both honest with each other?"  Desperate hope, candid feeling that only Irene the temptress could extract from a man with so many facades over his true self, now spilled into the brilliant detective's face. "Might I actually believe there is something _mutual_ between us, Irene?"  His eyes narrowed when she hesitated, and his hands recoiled.  "Or am I just abandoning myself to be trampled under your feet?"  

"I am night," said she, "and you are day.  We compliment each other in the most natural and intimate fashion.  But, sir, this does not mean we shall ever be as one.  We each have our own time, space, and existence."  She stroked his cheek with a slender finger, in apology.  "You asked for _honesty_, my dear."

            "That is . . . most cynical, milady," Holmes murmured, dodging her touch.

            "No," Irene retorted.  "It is merely realistic."  A faint smile teased her lips. "It is 'elementary.' " 

            "Now you drive your point by mocking me," he seethed, hovering over her.  Accusations hissed through his teeth.  "_Typical_ of a woman.  Not a deuced _one _of you is reliable or trustworthy, even in the most _meager_ sense." 

            "Careful, sir." She stood her ground, slowly sliding a hand up his angrily heaving chest.  Her fingers reached the top button of his vest and snapped it open.  Tantalizingly.  "You just may prove to me the rumors at Strand Magazine that you are in fact a _misogynist_." 

            "Get your hands _off _me, you manipulative _sorceress_.  This is ludicrous—first you buck me off you at the _least_ intimation of my affection, and then you tug me back into your gossamer web when I withdraw!  _Snake_!" 

            Irene's other hand clasped the back of Holmes's neck; it was clammy.  She licked her lips, unsnapped another button.  "You don't really mean that, Sherlock."

            "I most certainly _do_." 

            "Oh?  Then perhaps you are admitting that I have defeated you, that I have gotten under your skin at last—you seem _terribly_ upset by me."

            "Hardly."  His voice cracked.  He began to back away, towards the table.  His body careened into it, knocking over saucers and china teacups.  Neither of them noticed.  Irene Adler's arms struck out and tightly encoiled her illustrious prey, now cornered.  Her whiskey amber eyes glistened.  "Then _make _me let go of you, sir," she cooed.

            He thrust forward against her, seized her face in his hands and kissed her—raw and hard.  Every suppressed impulse was released into it, and neither of them, forgetting the numerous guests in the study and outside the boarding house, retreated from it for a considerable time. 

            "Oh!"  A startled noise sounded in the doorway: a woman's voice.  They flung apart and gasped like children caught in a bout of extreme mischief, eyes gaping.  There stood Mrs. Hudson, acute delight on her features.  "My goodness, forgive my intrusion!" she giggled, face rosy, turning to go.  "I only just heard the sound of glass breaking and I . . . well, never mind, I shall clean it up later." 

            But Holmes's momentum of seconds past was gone—his passion with it.  Twice as morose as he had been, he stooped to pick up the shards of the china creamer he'd knocked off the table.  "No need, Mrs. Hudson," he urged hastily, "please stay."

            Irene's eyes snapped on him, on the entranced stare he fixed on the landlady, and her own face fell.  " . . . I see," she breathed.  She rose shaking hands up to her disheveled bun and quickened to tame it.  "I think it's about time I left, then.  Getting . . . late." 

The sound of glass shattering inside Holmes's bedroom had alarmed our company; before I could protest, for the sake of propriety or safety (for Irene Adler was a woman with ulterior motives), Mrs. Hudson had leapt to her feet, entered, and shut the door softly behind her.  After her trespassing exceeded five minutes, Professor Moriarty and I cast each other puzzled looks, rose, and simultaneously approached Holmes's door.  We were greeted by a near slam in the face as none other than Ms. Adler darted out into the study, more than a little bewildered.  Her left dress sleeve was slightly askew, and her lipstick had been smudged.  She cast Moriarty, who scoffed far louder than he needed to, a shifty glare. 

"Are you quite alright, madam?"  I ventured.  When Ms. Adler did not answer, I turned to Holmes, and to Mrs. Hudson, who all but fled the bedroom from behind us.  The golden-haired landlady did all she possibly could not to look at Holmes and our female company, but still, for some reason, could not help but erupt into a flood of quiet giggles.  She seized the biscuit tray that she had earlier brought to the study and shoved it at the Professor, grinning at him like a child that is embarrassed by, but privy to, a secret.  Moriarty blinked.  She winked at him and prodded the tray against his stomach a second time.  One eyebrow risen, he shrugged and took one of the hot, steamy treats without questioning her sudden amusement.  "I, ah . . . trust your discussion has been profitable?"  he asked through a crumpet-stuffed mouth.  And then he smirked.

Mrs. Hudson giggled again, harder and louder.  She covered her mouth, shook her head and departed quickly from the room.  I watched her go, mystified.  "What is so amusing?" I blurted.  "Holmes, _do _give us your answer!" 

Scarlet seeped into Holmes's cheeks.  He coughed.  "Only time will tell," he mumbled, while Irene Adler distanced herself from him, finding sudden fascinating with the titles on his bookshelf. 

"But what did you discuss?" I probed.

"_Don't be presumptuous, Watson_!" my friend snapped.  "Matters have been resolved, that is all: Irene has agreed to help us.  Now, to the case at hand!"

My jaw dropped.  "Well, I . . . R-right, then.  Whatever you say, old boy." 

Moriarty guffawed.

A relative détente fell upon our unlikely band of detectives as we all agreed to plunge into our respective investigative duties. We parted for the evening, to meet again at noon the next day for a lunch conference at a pleasant little bodega in the East End—near the scene, Holmes told me, of one of the recent murders.  Somehow this revelation drastically reduced the fresh, clean cheer of the little park benches, of Sunday-dressed children running loose and leaping into rain puddles, and the smart-clip-clop of horse's hooves in the street.  Perhaps, I mused, daylight was as deceptive as night's darkness.

Irene Adler had been ordered to take a post at a nearby bookshop, a modest place that she frequented and thus would seem unsuspicious visiting yet again.  The shop, "The Reflector's Pond," was owned by a wealthy young man named James Kenneth Stephen; a public orator and alumnus of Cambridge, Stephen published a somewhat unorthodox newspaper called "the Reflector," involving issues from the loftiest debates on the uselessness of teaching Greek and other dead languages to the most common daily news.  Characteristic of his articles, Ms. Adler reported, were strikingly dutiful, precise accounts of the Ripper crimes. What was so strange, so logically discordant, to her, was the fact that alongside these articles were scholarly essays of the most hateful quality—against _women_.  A misogynist living in the East End was simply too great a curiosity for Holmes to ignore; thus Ms. Adler was promptly assigned to a post spying on the activities of the Reflector's Pond.  Polly, Wiggins and the Baker Street Irregulars were assigned to assist her, surrounding the unsuspecting block with their keen young eyes. 

Professor Moriarty and his men donned disguises and visited the library newspaper archives as well as friends families of the deceased, gathering as much information about the pattern of the Ripper's past crimes as possible before the luncheon hour.

That morning, Mrs. Hudson was asked to stay inside the boarding house yet again.  And yet again, she was furious with us.  She spoke not a word to Holmes or myself over breakfast; we were in fact obliged to fetch our own food from the kitchen while she sat over her embroidery needle stitching up a ripped pair of Holmes's trousers.   It made us both feel deucedly guilty.  And when Holmes told her that Moriarty had been the one to suggest her sequestration, she grew even angrier.  "_He _ought to know better," she hissed, tossing her hair and thrusting her little nose upward.  We were afraid, when she fixed those piercing aquamarine eyes on us, to ask what she meant.  And Holmes, who had planned to claim that he agreed with Moriarty's advice, bit his tongue. 

Noon arrived and so did we, marching together from the brougham and planting ourselves on a park bench by the bakery shop door. After a period of five minutes, three unfamiliar men and a woman drifted down the street and joined us.

 The tallest and shortest of them wore gentleman's finery and spectacles; the gangly one clawed at his bowtie as if it were as alien and uncomfortable as a leech. 

"Stop that," the pudgy one growled through his fake moustache, jabbing the lanky one's side.  "You're Colonel Keats, remember? Stop _pickin'_ at it!"  I recognized them then:  O'Toole and Marrow. 

The man of Holmes's precise height and the woman, slightly taller than me, were dressed like Irish ruffians: rags, patches, cigarettes, and all.  The urchin even carried a bottle of half-drunk whiskey.  I did not recognize the taller hoodlum without his monocle—not until he spoke. 

"We have more newspaper articles than could satiate an ocean of curiosity," said Professor Moriarty, tipping his cap and grinning at me as I jolted in surprise.  To prove it, he gestured at Sebastian Moran, who batted his false eyelashes, pursed his rouged lips, and curtsied at us, producing a wad of yellowed, typed-upon paper. "Shall we commence?"

"Capital!" Holmes crowed, standing and, for the sake of artifice, offering our femininely clad visitor his seat.  Sebastian took it, chuckling; I edged several inches away from stabbing distance of my new bench-mate.  Holmes, Moriarty, O'Toole and Marrow hunkered down in the grass.  "Give us what you've found!"

"But where is the femme fatale?" Moriarty snorted. "Playing hookie?"

"Present and accounted for, Professor," came a familiar voice, guised in a deeper pitch.  We all turned to see a skinny, delicate-featured chimney sweep standing several feet away, grinning at us.  A boy . . . no . . . no, as the intruder approached, I could see her through the face free of make-up and instead coated in soot: 

It was Irene Adler! "Or do you still doubt my prowess as an actress?"

Moriarty folded his arms across his chest.  He gave an indignant sniff. "Alright, milady, peace.  Well done, indeed." 

"Thank you."  Irene tossed her cap off, loosed her hair from the tight bun on top of her head, and took a seat next to Holmes.  He was staring at her openly, eyes wide.  "Yes, Sherlock," she purred, casting him a sidelong glance, "it's the same outfit I wore the night I passed by your house and said goodbye—the night I left for America." 

". . . I see," my friend mumbled.

"_Bra-vo_!" Moriarty added under his breath, grinning toothily. 

"Professor," Holmes curtly resumed, addressing the master criminal around poor Smiley, who, it seemed, was the buffer between the two hateful adversaries.  "While you're muttering to yourself, perhaps you might include some of the information you've discovered?"

"Don't rush genius," Moriarty snarled back.  "I was just about to do so."  He snatched the crisply folded documents from Sebastian, removed his monocle, and began scanning the pages for the products of his research.  "Ahh, yes, here we are," he grunted, flipping through the pages in rapid succession. "Known victims: Mary Ann Michols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, hum, that was a wild one . . . Catherine Eddowes, Mary Jane Kelly, Annie Millwood, Ada Wilson, oh . . . blast, but that's a . . . lot of blood . . ."

The boy, Marrow, whimpered, rocking back and forth in spot.  O'Toole reached out and brushed his friend's shoulder to calm him.

"I'm sorry, Smiley," Moriarty winced, truly meaning it, and gave the gangly lad's back a few sturdy pats. "I forgot myself.  In any case, ah . . . who else?  Emma Smith, Martha Tabram, the 'Whitehall Mystery,' Annie Farmer, Rose Mylett, Elizabeth Jackson, Alice MacKenzie, the 'Pinchen St. Murder'. . . of course, Mrs. . . .Marrow . . ."

Now Smiley grabbed the handkerchief from his costume and coughed into it violently, his face gone a color between blue and gray.  The rest of us tried our best to allow the boy a private moment of composure before Moriarty concluded.

" . . .And finally, the most recent murder, Frances Coles." 

"Good, excellent.  And the circumstances and location of that particular attack?"   Holmes fingered his matchbox, lighting his pipe without once glancing away from the Professor.

Moriarty crossed his long legs and cupped his chin in his hands, resuming that peculiar countenance of the vulture and the praying mantis that I had seen when he had been snooping in my friend's bookshelves the previous night.  "Hmm, yes . . . ghastly.  The thirteenth of this month . . . how dreadfully appropriate.  It took place around 2 in the morning . . . ah, here are the particulars.  Smiley, perhaps you and Todd would like to take a turn about the block while I read this off to Mr. Holmes."

"S-sure, Professor," the tall lad stuttered, standing unsteadily.  Todd, Sebastian and I rose to help him, but he waved us off with a gentle, lost smile, and limped to the pavement.  Todd followed at his heels. 

" . . . poor boy," Ms. Adler breathed, so softly that it was but inaudible.  Her eyes glistened with empathetic tears; she glared sharply down at the grass to control herself.  I was astonished by the compassion that she displayed—astonished and heart-warmed.

"Yes.  He did not deserve this," Moriarty agreed, stunning me all the more.  He acquired less, however, of my immediate admiration.  He had yet to gain my trust.  Or, I noted with one look at the detective's narrow gaze, Holmes's trust.  But once the two lads were fully out of hearing distance, the Professor resumed.  "This is the official report:  'A respectable young woman born to a shoemaking father in the Whitechapel District, Frances began, for reasons unknown, a life of prostitution at the age of 18.' "

"That's two years ago to this day," Holmes murmured, tapping my shoulder and nodding at my notebook.  "Write it down, old boy."

"Christ God, but what a shame that is," I moaned, struggling to record the information before dropping my head between my legs.  I felt, suddenly, violently ill.

"And an even greater shame, doctor, that the 'great city' she lived in did nothing to ameliorate her financial circumstances," Moriarty growled, eyes burning.  "A shame the patriarchs of London _drove_ this girl, like so many others, to her fate by their bloody _indifference_."

Ms. Adler breathed a soft, according laugh.  Holmes fell still.

But I could not quite fathom the accusations with which I was forced to reckon.  "Are you actually saying that the good men of thus country are to blame for that girl's death?"

"Perhaps not _solely_, Watson," Holmes interjected, casting Moriarty a look that requested restraint.

"But I do not understand.  How could men like us have, in . . . in _any _way . . ."

"The last time you refused to give a beggar child a sixpence that you could have easily sacrificed, John," Sebastian hissed, drumming his fingers against the bench, "the last time you spat in a thief's face or degraded a loose woman, or turned a blind eye to a fellow man's suffering, _you _contributed to this.  Oh, yes, Mr. Holmes, you're right—there's a germ of evil there already, no doubt.  But someone—_everyone_—has to _feed_ it for it to _flourish _the way that Jack the Ripper has. Someone has to give it the _opportunity_ to hurt others.  Someone has to put people like Frances Cole and the other harlots in the line of fire, so that we can all point and shake our heads like . . .like sanctimonious old prudes and . . . and cluck, '_Oh, see, there.  Tsk, tsk! See what happens on account of whores. That's what they get_!'  God . . . I _hate _this country."

I could find no words for this observation.  For I realized that it was true. 

"Ah, Watson," Moriarty drove the point home, "for a field medic, you're awfully naïve . . . aren't you?" 

"And God _Bless_ his innocence," Holmes testily leapt to my defense while I sat there sputtering.  "Now finish the report, please."

Moriarty shrugged.  "Very well.  'Frances was first thrown down violently to the ground; revealed by a few wounds on the back of the head. Her throat was cut, most likely, according to Dr. Phillips, who performed the autopsy and Dr. F.J. Oxley, the first doctor at the scene, while she was lying on the pavement. Phillips believed the killer held her head back by the chin with his _left _hand, cutting the throat with his _right_. The knife passed the throat three times -- first from _left to right_, then from _right to left_, and _once more from left to right_. Oxley believed there were two wounds, since there was only one incision in the skin but two openings in the larynx.' "

"Oh, Lord," I moaned, my many years of medical school reproducing the image of the wound in my mind with disconcerting clarity.  I dropped my pencil mid-scrawl.  Holmes reached up and patted my shoulder while Moriarty continued.

" 'The killer struck from the right side of the body or from the front. The body was titled at the moment the wound was inflicted in a manner so that the killer would avoid becoming bloodstained. Her clothes were in order, and there were no abdominal mutilations.'  Bloody hell, I swear, even _I_ haven't the nerve to . . . in such _cold blood_ . . ."

"I believe you," Holmes cut the Professor off with a wave of his hand.  His scowl had grown positively predatory.  "It appears as though our next investigative target would be Dr. Oxley.  He may have actually seen some sign of the perpetrator.  But first a word from our skilled actress.  Anything suspicious during your vigil, Irene?" 

"Not particularly," the opera star lilted, glancing airily above our heads.  She inspected her long, shining fingernails.  "Although I did see a man that I have not seen before at the store:  a fish seller by the name of Joseph Barnett, delivering some fresh catches to Mr. Stephen's store door.  Apparently our bookselling friend has a predilection for herring.  In any case, he was a very unsuspicious fellow, aside some rather condescending, rude remark Mr. Stephen made to him about nearly losing his job for a petty theft incident."

"Not a profitable morning, then," I snorted.

"Perhaps," said Holmes.  "And perhaps not.  We shall consider the facts surrounding Mr. Barnett at a later date.  Thank you, Irene, you have been most helpful, as expected."

"As hoped," she retorted, producing that feline grin. 

And Holmes smiled back. 

"_Professor!"_   The burly O'Toole barreled back onto the scene of our conspiring, shattering the moment between the detective and opera star.  Todd was a lad prone to a curious mixture of uninspired common sense and panic under duress, typically resolved by a barrage of running in circles and screaming; at the moment, he was employing his coping devices to their fullest potential—contracting innumerable stares from passing motorcars, pedestrians and horse carts.  "Lord God, _Professor_! Smiley an' I just found somethin' wicked _awful_, sir'!"

In one sweeping, snakelike motion, Moriarty stood, seized O'Toole's jacket and flung him to the grass; then, with remarkable credibility, he thrust himself at the lad's knees, pretending to grovel for some imagined crime against his short, stout "boss."  "_Idiot_!" he whispered, simultaneously fixing a false look of the penitent servant on the disgruntled Todd.  "Do you _want_ us to get recognized and arrested?  Now calm down and stop behaving as if _I _in my _rags_ were _your_ superior—you're a _gentleman_, remember, '_Colonel_'?!  What's afoot?"

"Oh, oh of course, s-sir," the mortified O'Toole murmured back, sliding down into a sitting position.  He glanced up at the lingering nosy park-goers, biting his tongue. 

Holmes rose, took the lad's shoulder and helpfully barked, "Oh, come now, Colonel, ah . . . _Sherrinford_, _do_ settle down!  I am sure that this poor sod is, uh, not the, ah, culprit, but rest assured, _I_ shall get to the bottom of the theft of your, ah, um_, family jewels_!"  He patted Moriarty's falsely penitent head.  "Here's Colonel Keats now to cheer you!" He pointed at the finely-clad Smiley, who arrived with a look of equal disconcertedness on his long face. But before Marrow too could fly into a fit that attracted the suspicion of the London citizens, the snooping pedestrians found Holmes's improvised act satiating; they scattered back to their daily business.  Some even muttered delighted approval and excitement about "that famous detective Holmes's latest adventure."  Sometimes gullibility was a marvelous tool. 

Moriarty growled deep in his throat, still bent over in his artificial beggary. His every limb stiffened, and his eyes shifted up to my friend's face.  "Get your tobacco-stinking fingers _off _my head, Holmes."

"And you are welcome," Holmes chuckled, obliging.  "Now," and here the detective joined Moriarty, Smiley, and Todd on the grass.  "Please, boys, share the subject of your alarm."

"_Spy_!" O'Toole gasped.  "Prob'ly for the _Ripper_!"

"Back on that street corner—the skinny blond capper with _my clothes_ on!"  Marrow added with a whimper. 

Together, we all turned to look down the street.

Standing roughly fifteen feet away from us, clad in the familiar pageboy attire of one of Moriarty's men, was a thin, fair-headed creature, whose sleeves and pantlegs were rolled up to the shoulders and knees.  His delicate frame was all but hidden in the oversized clothing.  He was wholly unfamiliar.  To me, at least, and to the Colonel and boys. 

Irene Adler's face remained composed.  But there was merriment dancing in her eyes—merriment and intrigue.  

Moriarty's moustache twitched, and he glowered at our newfound spy for some time before thrusting his head back and, inexplicably, letting loose a slow, soft chuckle. 

"Oh, drat.  Perhaps I should approach her. . ." Holmes began.  Muscles taut, his face retained its fierce scowl long after the Professor began to laugh.

_Her? _

"No," Moriarty replied, holding up his palms to the detective in a gesture of surrender.  "_Admit_ it, my dear Holmes.  It was foolish of us both to try to restrain the witty creature—no sense in wasting your time now.  You have my word I'll watch our tricky friend every moment."

"Quite right," my friend sighed.  "It's just that I worry.  And I think _you_ worry too, Professor. I think in fact that your involvement was for Smiley's sake, but even _more_ for . . . "

"Oh, indeed, good sir.  But at this point . . ."

"Yes, I know.  We've tried.  It's up to her now." 

I shook my head slowly, casting Sebastian and the boys a rueful glance.  "Do you have any clue what those two are talking about?" I groaned.

"Not a bloody inking," Moran shrugged.

"Every word," Irene giggled.  "But you weren't asking _me_, _were_ you, Doctor?"

"Oh, blast, I'm sorry," I fumbled. 

"That's alright," she cooed. "We all make mistakes."

I blushed.

Todd groaned.

"So there's no spy?" Smiley warbled, blinking thickly at us.

"Oh, there's _plenty _of artifice involved in _this _affair, Mr. Marrow," Holmes breathed, casting Professor Moriarty a cryptic glance.  He tossed his cigarette into the grass like a gauntlet.

His sole peer smirked enigmatically back.  "Oh.  Quite."

Todd and Smiley were excused to return to the library and conduct more extended research on the geographical coordinates of the Ripper crimes.  Murmuring about the scratchiness of their "fancy clothes," they were more than grateful to obey.

Holmes and I paid a visit to Dr. Oxley and the body of Frances Coles at 2 O'Clock that afternoon.  Ms. Adler, clothed as a working class youth, would pose as Holmes's pageboy and do her best quality of snooping while Holmes and I questioned the autopsy report. 

The morgue that Oxley peopled was but a block away from our picnic.  It sat in a peculiar hodgepodge of respectable businesses and subtly tucked-in opium houses, pubs, and brothels.  Next door was a hospital for the insane; the screams of men and women lost to the world and themselves, wracked with battle fatigue, syphilis and hysteria, could be heard between the distant wails of King's Cross Train Station and steamboats on the Thames.  It was a disgusting place. 

Moriarty and Moran, as was their shabby dress, stationed themselves at a light post down the street from the morgue, by an alley, and pose as a beggar couple.  Again the Professor assured my friend that he would not take his eyes off the peculiar new follower who had stolen Smiley's clothes.  In thanks, Holmes issued Moriarty a warning that Inspector Lestrade's men had been ordered to the district that morning, and that any act of assistance in solving the Ripper crime ought to be conducted with an increased awareness of Scotland Yard's presence.  "I'm going to need your help a little longer," the detective had claimed to Moriarty's puzzled face, "so I'd rather you not get caught by the authorities just yet.  That's all."

Holmes led Adler and myself into the bottom floor of the morgue with the confidence of a staff member.  That gleam of smugness and ferocity in his eye told me that he had caught his scent and was prepared to go to the ends of the earth with his jaws locked on his suspicions.  The game was afoot.

We were greeted in a manner wholly unanticipated:  by a past client of Holmes, good friend of Mrs. and the late Mr. Hudson's, and victim of Moriarty—a young pilot named Tommy Nesbitt.  He stood at medium height, firmly built, with messy auburn hair, a trim moustache strikingly similar to Moriarty's and wide, continuously perplexed eyes that he now fixed on us as he left the very room that we were to enter.  "Oh," he cried, looking halfway between ill and terrified.  "Oh, Holmes! Watson! What an unexpected pleasure in such a dreary place!" 

"I could say the same of you, old boy!" I chuckled.

'What brings you here, Tommy?" Holmes interrupted.  I had always noted a quiet resentment passing between my friend and this particular client, especially when Tommy spoke of his closeness with James and Marie Hudson.  But Holmes's ambiguous feelings for our landlady were hardly any new concept to me.  Perhaps it was because I shared them. 

"My second cousin," Tommy half-gulped, ascending the stairs, gesturing limply at the door to the bottom floor.  "She . . . Frances was my second cousin.  I hardly knew her at all, but nobody else in the immediate family wanted to come identify her, so they wired me and asked me to come over.  Oh, Lord, sirs, it's a nasty thing, what this monster's done."

"And if you'll kindly let us pass on by," Holmes snapped, "I plan to get to the bottom of just that atrocity."

Tommy blinked, feeling the sting of his undue upbraiding.  "I'm . . . s-sorry, Mr. Holmes.  Godspeed.  I will help you in any way possible."  With that he passed us, covering his mouth to prevent getting sick all over the concrete floor, and bolted out the front door of the morgue.

"Holmes, really," I clucked, "just because you have feelings for Mrs. Hudson, did Mr. Nesbitt _really_ deserve such a . . .? "

My voice puttered to nothingness as my friend turned and tossed me a ferocious glare.  I needed no words to promise instant silence.

Our next greeter, at the bottom step of the concrete stairwell, was Oxley himself: a short, portly fellow with tiny eyes and a snarling muzzle. His fur and skin were so pale that I could see the blue of his veins in his forehead.  "Who are you?  This is an _outrage_!" he blustered, blocking our way into the back room of the bottom floor.  "How dare you come poking into the business of others? Have you no respect for the dead?"

My friend smiled at him, undaunted, and extended his hand.  "My name is Sherlock Holmes.  It is my business to know what other people don't."

"Ah, the famous detective," Dr. Oxley moaned.  "Somehow I expected to receive you at some point or another in your illustrious career.  Forgive my temper, you might have guessed that I am particularly _buried_ in jobs at the moment—ah hah, no pun intended, good sirs!"  He wheezed and whined in a rhythmic fashion, apparently his breed of laughter.

I shuddered, eyes roving to the many slots in the concrete walls—graves of those to be cremated.  Suddenly even Moriarty's company would have been preferable in this dank, deathly quiet place.

"Of course," Holmes retorted, his nose wrinkling.  He coughed once to hide his disgust.  Or perhaps it was a signal—for suddenly Irene, in her disguise, began to back away from our company and towards one of the outstretched tables, where a female body rested.  Holmes continued, in a more animated fashion that lured Oxley's attention.  "I am attempting to bring the fiend known as Jack the Ripper to justice.  A recent autopsy report regarding one Frances Coles includes your statement at the scene of the crime.  We were wondering if we could question you further on some of the details."  He smiled gently as the freakish little doctor's hands began to tremble.  "_Off _the record, of course."

"Speak, sir," said Oxley, steadying himself.  "I am willing to comply."

"Excellent.  It is not so much the autopsy itself that concerns me, Doctor, but rather what else you may have observed at the actual crime scene.  Please think for me a moment, and tell me anything about the _environment _that comes to mind. _Any_ petty detail may matter _invaluably_, sir."

"Well, I . . . I'm rather uncertain, mind you.  It's a worse business than any other murders I've seen in my trade, so I came away from the incident in something of a state of shock."

"Of course."  Holmes continued to rivet Oxley in his place with his piercing stare, giving no quarter.  "Nevertheless, continue."

"I can tell you this—there were very large footprints marked in blood all around the woman . . . the _body_ . . . and there was a gold pocketwatch discarded several feet from her . . . from _it_.  I was asked to give the police and photographers space after making my report . . . I went and stood by . . . by some alley, and then I . . . smelled it."

"What?" Holmes snapped.  He drew within inches of the doctor's face, eyes wide.  "Tell me what you smelled, sir!  Make haste, now!"

" . . . blood.  Blood and . . . perfume.  But it wasn't human blood, understand.  It was different.  Salty or something.  I can't really explain it.  And then I heard . . . a man . . . a man whispering something in the dark of the alley.  Something queer and cruel, like 'time's up for her,' and I turned around and screamed, and a few bobbies came running to me.  Then I saw two shadows—God, sir, they must have been there all along, and . . . and now they just thrashed away from me, down the alley.  Two men, and one of them was big, the other very thin and small.  They were so fast. There was that smell again, and when one of them—the big one—ran past me, he sort of . . . flung his arm, and something wet splattered in my . . .eyes . . ."  Here the doctor paused to cover his eyes, and slow his ragged breathing.  "God . . . I turned back around and one of the bobbies told me  that there was blood on my face."

"_Which_ arm?" Holmes cried.  "You _must_ remember! _Which_ _arm_?  And the perfume, what was it, precisely?"

" . . . The right, I think. And . . . _flowers_.  I think some sort of flowers.  And there was heavy breathing too, I . . . think. The bigger man."

My friend grasped Oxley's shoulder and shook it once, hard. "You _think_, but do you _know_?"

"I _told _you," the doctor simpered, "I do not _know any_ of it! It is all . . . all _so_ . . ."

An enormous crash drew our attention.  There, feigning an accident, stood Irene, the examining table and tools having collapsed at the floor by her; the naked form of Frances Coles lay unadorned and unhidden before us.  "Oh, gov'nor," she played her best false Cockney, eyes wide with expertly rendered shock.  " Do f'give me, milord, I were just lookin' . . ."

"Oh, you _stupid_ boy!  Get your grimy fingers away from Ms. Coles's body!"  Oxley roared, regaining his volcanic temper.  As he flew at the fallen equipment, scrambling to retrieve and clean it, Holmes threw me a wink and my own performance began. 

"Stupid, indeed!" I crowed, grabbing Irene's arm.  "Another public botch-up like this and it's back to the chimney sweep for _you_, son!"

Adler and I pretended to grapple to the death at a location conveniently harrying to the doctor's progress in retrieving his tools.  Ocassionally I even pushed the disguised lady directly into him, knocking him flat on his back and scattering his forceps, tweezers, and needle every which way.  The curses that then flowed from his lips as he struggled back onto his knees lack the dignity of being repeated in these pages. 

All during this bedlam, Holmes stooped over the body of Coles, poking and prodding, staring and note-taking.  At last he gave his signal to stop.  "Show the brute out, Watson," he snapped, urging the disguised Irene to the stairwell.  "We shall have him fired from our employ at once!"

With marvelous authenticity, Irene Adler spat upon the concrete floor and disappeared up the stairs.  Holmes passed by me with an infinitesimal wink.  He had gotten his clues.  He offered the disgusted Oxley a hand.  And as the doctor struggled to his feet, Holmes entreated, "You have been most helpful, good sir.  I urge of you one final question.  In what alley, do you recall, did you see these two men flee?"

"Oh, didn't I tell you?" the doctor blustered.  "Well, that I do know.  It was the alley right down the street from this very building!"

Suddenly Holmes's face melted to a state of rare panic, as if something wholly unrelated to the interrogation at hand had induced his horror.  "Right here?" he breathed.  "Are you _certain?"_

"Why, yes."

"Oh, damn, _damn_!" My friend roared, tearing up the steps and all but abandoning me with our mole-like witness.  "Damn, _Mrs. Hudson_!"

"What about her?" I cried at his back, following.

"Danger, Watson! She is in danger this minute!"  Holmes paused, turning to face me as we fled out the morgue door and leapt into the motorcar.  "For _she_ is the spy who has been following us all day! Make haste, for I fear there's not another soul in this cursed part of town willing to save her from an attack!"

Marie Hudson was not a woman easily stopped when she really felt something must be done—be it an apple strudel or the rescue of a pilot from a crashed airplane.  So, five minutes after those beloved but irritatingly protective gentlemen left her boarding house, she grabbed her bonnet and walking shoes, hailed a cab, and was off.  It took her no great time to find Moriarty's famous airplane "hidden" among the shrubbery by the Thames, or the wadded up bundle of Smiley's working clothes.  She returned home, changed, and was transformed into an indiscriminate youth.  At this moment she understood precisely the allure of crossdressing which that cunning lady Irene Adler saw fit to use. 

She had trailed Holmes's motorcar tracks in the mud of the park, and come upon the company of detectives sometime around 1:30 that chilly afternoon.  And after that, though she grew more and more aware that Holmes and Moriarty caught wind of her, she had merely followed their exploits.  Let them try and stop her from helping out.  Not typically prone to a fierce temper, she was all but prepared to take a swing at them both today. 

Presently, spotting Holmes, Watson, and Adler entering the morgue, the widow slid into an alley and hid, waiting.

She thought she saw someone familiar passing by—was it Tommy, Jim's old friend?  Perhaps, but he didn't recognize her in the crowd, and he moved on down the street.

 She did not expect, while crouching there in Smiley's clothes in the filth of the alley in broad daylight, to be joined by someone else.  But a hand—cold as ice and hairless, like a dead fish—encircled her neck, and before she could scream, a deep rasping, foul-smelling whisper accosted her.  "_Time's up, pretty girl._"  Another arm encircled her waist as she twisted to face her attacker.  But he wore a black mask.  She flashed a look at his belt: There was a large, glimmering knife in his pocket, and next to it, a brand-new watch.  Both were stained with blood. 

Marie Hudson's heart vaulted into her throat—it was _him_.  "That's what _you_ think!" she roared, kicking Jack the Ripper explosively in the groin.  And then, when, unfazed, he grabbed her and dragged her deeper into the alley, she started screaming.  "_Help! Attack! Help, someone, it's Jack the Ripper_!"  She flung off her hat and let loose her hair; something about the fairer sex always made men more likely to come to its rescue. 

A face, a familiar face, appeared in the front of the alley—yes, this time she was sure it was Tommy Nesbitt.  "Marie?" he wailed. He took a few steps towards her—she screamed for him and stretched out her only free arm.

"_Bugger off, boy_!" her unseen accoster snarled, dragging her farther into the darkness. She kicked and screamed again. But this time she could not turn around and reach his sensitive places.  She was trapped. 

 And then, to her terror, Tommy obeyed the Ripper:  He ran away. "Oh, God!" he hollered.  "Help, someone, it's an attack! _Help_!" 

"Tommy!" _Oh, Lord God, she was being abandoned_.  The fish-cold hands clapped around her throat now—she realized how coarse, how chapped, they were, rough against her jugular.  Something sharp brushed under her chin.  The knife. "Tommy, come _back_!" 

Then it happened.  Oh, yes, someone came, but it wasn't Tommy.  In the span of ten seconds, a tall spry frame clad in rags darted down the alley, drew a gun from his tattered trousers, and fired.  "_Touch her and dig your grave, scum_!"  came words that were raspy with sheer rage.  She could not place the voice—but she knew it from _somewhere._

She was dropped in an instant.  And in an instant, she was alone with her rescuer—as if the attack had never occurred.  She covered her mouth and stifled a sob, suddenly feeling very dizzy.  Her ears rang from the gunshot. 

The quick man dropped his still-smoking pistol and flung himself on the ground next to her.  "Mrs. Hudson, are you alright?" He threw off his cap and then his coat, covering her wet, mud-stained body with it.  Once his working clothes were removed, a familiar white, red-trimmed suit glared from underneath: totally exposed.  Gently he took her neck into his hands, inspecting a tiny cut from her assailant's knife.  "Oh, good—you're not hurt.  I should take you home."   She knew that voice now—she had heard it speak the same words to her before.  She knew _him_. 

"Professor Moriarty!"  she whimpered, all but stunned.  "Oh, God . . . thank you!" She tried to take his hands, but the world was beginning to spin, to lurch like a stumbling horse.  "I . . .oh . . ."  And with that, consciousness fled her. She fell limp into Moriarty's arms. 

The Professor sighed, glancing out the alley—at least a hundred faces greeted him, all of them shocked and horrified.  Oh, yes, without his costume, they recognized him, too.  At least, far more than they recognized his token of heroism only seconds past.  Damnation . . . There was absolutely no way of getting back to Baker Street without being arrested.

But he couldn't leave her here, either.  He couldn't trust that Holmes and Watson would find her this time, before danger struck again.  So he stood, lifted Marie Hudson up into his arms, and carried her out of the alley.  He paused when he reached the middle of the street, which had fallen into a deathly stillness.  Already the sound of Scotland Yard's car sirens was audible.  He grinded his jaw.  "Could someone please see that this lady is returned to 221 B Baker Street?"

Now the faces of Holmes, Watson, Moran and Adler joined those of the murmuring crowd.  Behind them lurked Tommy, his face a mask of pure shame.  "I thought all I could do was call for help," he stammered as Moriarty passed him by. 

The criminal riveted him in place with a look that silenced him immediately.  "Go home, _boy_," he hissed.  And Tommy turned, face gone gray, and limped off.

Sebastian Moran, in all his lipsticked glory, leapt in front of our motorcar during our desperate pursuit to save Mrs. Hudson from the Ripper.  He flailed his dress-clad arms frantically; the words that came from his lips were surreal.  "Hurry up, James just heard a lady screaming in the alley, and he told me that somehow it was that landlady of yours!  Christ's Sakes, men, come help him _save_ her!"

But when Holmes, Ms. Adler and I leapt from the motorcar, Moriarty had already emerged from the alley with Mrs. Hudson fully intact—in his arms.  Disgust and relief battled for the dominant feeling inside my chest as I watched them approach the street. 

Holmes approached that incredible form of James Moriarty, his own visage tight with frowning incomprehension.  "I . . . thank you truly, Professor," he stammered, snatching out for Mrs. Hudson's faint form.  "I can take her safely from here."

"Just a moment," Moriarty ventured, peering down into Mrs. Hudson's eyes.  They were beginning to flutter open.  "They're going to take me away now," he murmured, glancing at the bobbies pouring out of the cars.  Holmes and I watched him address our landlady as calmly as if he were discussing the weather, making none of his usual desperate gestures at escape.  Whatever he was saying to her was more important to him than his own freedom—his own vitality. 

Saving her, apparently, had been more important than these things, too. 

" But I need you to know something," the Professor pressed on urgently.  "You must believe that when all is said and done, I would never _really_ have hurt you—I mean when I first took you hostage, understand? I would _never_ have hurt you for _anything,_ not even to _win_.  And I never will.  I hope you know that now, Mrs. Hudson." 

Now the bobbies were upon him, two at each side grappling with him.  Holmes took Mrs. Hudson, who had heard every word, whose cheeks were regaining their rosy hue.  "Do you really think you even had to _ask_ that?  Of _course_ I knew!" she cried over her shoulder as Holmes placed her carefully into the motorcar.  Sorrow and sweetness strained her voice.

Amidst his rabid struggles against Scotland Yard's stooges, Moriarty managed to smile at her.  "Good!" he shouted, around his heaving, spitting, and growling towards the bobbies.  "Farewell, then!"  His eyes were desolate, that was plain—no matter how much he struggled.  He had already resigned to his fate.  Then at last the famous master criminal vanished, thrown into the back of the police car.

I could not believe it.  Never had I imagined that man so capable of such a sacrifice—and all for one woman.  What was between them, what sorcery or sentiment, that Holmes and I could not discern? 

And now, in light of that sacrifice . . . Moriarty's incarceration, and our victory in the midst of the Ripper crimes, seemed hideously . . . ill-timed. 

Not a jot of it was as satisfying as I had always imagined.  "Holmes ," I began, "perhaps considering the circumstances, we might . . ."

"I know, Watson," my friend interrupted.  "I _know_."

My thoughts were cut short by a new arrival.  As we anticipated, the meaty, plucky form of Inspector Lestrade appeared around the front of the car. I glanced behind me to warn Sebastian to disappear.  But he had already done so, without a trace.  So, it seemed, had Irene Adler. 

Jovially the Inspector marched up to Holmes's motorcar, addressing us all with a salute and a hearty laugh.  "Got him at last, didn't we, Mr. Holmes?" he barked.  "Wait'll Inspector Gregson hears about _my _accomplishment!"

Mrs. Hudson made a very unladylike noise in her throat and turned haughtily away. Lestrade shot her a skeptical look.

"She has endured much in the past few hours," Holmes injected.  "Allow her to be abrupt with you for the moment, Inspector.  She was nearly killed just now by Jack the Ripper himself.  If it were not for Professor Moriarty's timely intervention . . . "

"Jack the Ripper, you say?  You're a _lucky girl_, my dear! Good that someone was taking care of you . . ."

"No one '_takes care of me_,' Inspector," Mrs. Hudson spat, her chin still proudly tilted upward.  "I was _helped_." 

Again Lestrade thrust out a raucous laugh.  "Ah, what ye will, me dear!  Anyroad, you be a lucky . . ."  At last the other part of Holmes's documentation of the incident sunk into the Inspector's skull.  " . . .wait a minute.  _Whose _timely intervention?  I could have sworn ye just said . . ."

"I _did_."  Holmes offered Lestrade a thin smile, mustering his dwindling patience.  As for me, digging my fingernails into my palms, I had already lost mine several minutes past. I was glad that my friend occupied the position of our spokesperson; the Inspector would have already lost his head, or I mine, if I had not bitten my tongue against his foolishness. 

"Oh . . ." Now Scotland Yard's prime detective—whose determination and basic goodness _usually_, but not _always_, made up for his lack of wits—cocked his head in utter confusion.  He removed his hat and scratched his head. "But . . . that _filth_?  Why would . . . I don't _understand_, Mr. Holmes."

"I _know_ you don't, Inspector."  My friend's voice dripped sarcasm.  Then it acquired a more somber tone. "I couldn't be more shocked myself.  If it is possible, I would like to speak to the criminal once he is settled into his prison cell—to interrogate him, if you will."

Mrs. Hudson glanced back at us, her face quietly comprehending Holmes's intentions.  She covered her mouth to hide a smile.

"Why on earth?" Lestrade boomed.  "We caught your arch enemy, sir! What else is there to do but celebrate?"

"Is it really that much trouble, Inspector?" Holmes hissed.  "If it is, just let me know, and I can always take my inquiries to the Inspector General.  He's an old chum of mine . . ."

"Alright, calm down, good sir, ye needn't be cross!"  Lestrade cut him off with a wave of his hands, voice raising a panicked octave.  "Give us an hour or two, eh? And then we'll let ye speak to Moriarty as long as ye see fit!"

"Alone?"

"Alone or with a parade, sir, as long as ye _don't _bother the Inspector General with it!"

Holmes winked at his long-time police connection.  "Very good, Lestrade.  I can definitely see a promotion in your future."

We waited for the police car, Moriarty in it, to roar off down the street.  The crowd at the alley began to dissolve.  Finally, when no one was looking, Holmes dashed into the alley and snatched up Moriarty's discarded cap.  "Mrs. Hudson," he addressed our silent landlady, "could you hold onto the Professor's disguise—yes, the shirt that he wrapped around you?  We shall be needing it." 

Mrs. Hudson beamed at him.  "Most assuredly."

"Yes, Mr. Holmes, his hands were cold and coarse, and hairless.  And he stank of something I've never smelled before."

"Very good—that last observation is consistent with Dr. Oxley's recollections."  Holmes pounded his free fist against the motorcar's side, steering us down the street towards the prison to which Moriarty had been taken.  There was already a mob outside, jeering and laughing victims of the Professor's many past crimes throwing raw eggs at his cell window.  We pulled up at the front door, doing our best to disregard them: Or, in my case, to sympathize with them. " And the mask, Mrs. Hudson?"

"A theater mask of some sort—I think it was a black mask of Tragedy.  But I was awfully alarmed at the time, you know."  Mrs. Hudson's fingers inadvertently traced the tiny cut on her neck where her attacker had nearly sealed her fate.

"Where the deuce could that have come from?" I grumbled.

            "Merchandise like that often can be found at the Reflector's Pond Bookshop."  With her typical breed of dramatic timing, Irene Adler, still in her "walking clothes," strode up to the motorcar.  "Oh, come, now, Doctor, you didn't really expect me to abandon our cause just because of a few policemen, did you?"  She tipped her hat at me.

            I gulped and returned the gesture; yes, she was even enchanting in boy's clothes.  "Certainly not, Ms. Adler."

            Holmes shot questions at her at once, as if greeting her after her sudden absence were an unnecessary waste of breath.  "You mean the shop that our friend James Stephen owns has in its possession the very same masks?"

            "The very same," she replied, smiling at his abrupt energy. 

            "The culprit seems awfully obvious, Holmes," I remarked.  "Almost open-shut, if you ask me."

            "And that is precisely what gives me cause for caution, Watson," he murmured back.  "Use your wits.  Don't you think it's odd?  It is almost as if I am being _baited_ into convicting this man."

            Stung, I glanced at Irene Adler's face for some support of my opinion; to my surprise, fear, worry and crestfallenness all vied for expression in her person.  I took her suspicious reaction for mutual disappointment in Holmes's lack of approval.

            "Shall we pay our poor incarcerated professor a visit, then?" she suddenly spoke, her strange countenance vanishing. 

            "Might as well get this over with," Holmes nodded, gesturing me to follow him out of the motorcar.  "But Mrs. Hudson, perhaps you could . . ."

            "Let me guess," our landlady sighed.  " 'Stay here and wait for us.' " 

            He flashed her a bashful, winsome grin.  "You're a clever woman, aren't you, Madam?"  He took Moriarty's costume shirt from her hands and bid Ms. Adler put it on under her own disguise. 

            Mrs. Hudson rolled her eyes.  "Just go."

Moriarty's cell was solitary, the farthest down the prison basement hallway; the morgue paled to the gloom in this place, especially with the hateful din of the mob outside.  Five armed guards were obliged to leave us alone with him; they left the floor entirely.  It was remarkable what rules could be waived with one threat of complaint to an Inspector General.

We peered into the damp, dark space, and barely made out a thin, lanky form squatted in the far corner.  A head emerged periodically from the shadows, swaying in a familiar snakelike fashion, and deep, rhythmic breathing, like a cross between hissing and sobbing, accompanied it.

Holmes knocked on the bars once; everything about his demeanor grew cold and severe.  Irene stood a respectful distance away from their conversation, while I was unfortunately obligated to remain at my post next to my friend and watch Professor Moriarty come to life inside his cell. 

He tossed his head, cavalier even in entrapment, and sneered at us all.  "How sweet.  And here I expected Sebastian and the boys.  Come to cheer me up, gentlemen?  Or perhaps to mock me?  I've got all eternity for it now.  Oh, wait,"  a brittle laugh interrupted his words, " I've only five days.  Then I'll be hanged, and according to the priest, the rest of eternity will thoroughly occupy me with a blend of fire and brimstone.  The thanks I get for trying just once to be a _good_ man." 

 "Why did you do this, Professor?"  Holmes demanded, ignoring his foe's bitter epilogue.

Moriarty's swaying, reptilian countenance suddenly glinted with a strange new passion.  "She was _kind_ to me," he replied.  "Does a man need any other reason to protect somebody?"

Holmes leveled, eyes drilling through Moriarty's warily glowering face.  "Not an _honorable_ man," he growled.  "But I am not speaking to one, _am_ I?"

The detective's nemesis let loose a snarl and lunged through the bars.  Holmes, expecting his rage, dodged his clawing and punching. 

I, however, was obliged to scurry to the far side of the prison hallway and join Irene Adler, despite the lead and steel that stood between our foe and us.  I never had forgotten being thoroughly thrashed by the Professor during our stay at the Roylott Mansion, in the case I later titled "The Speckled Band."  _Never_.

"_Damn _you!" Moriarty spat, kicking the bars explosively.  He whirled away, baring his back at Holmes, arms crossed over his heaving chest.  "A _fine_ time for you to turn into an idiot!  I can't be of much bloody help to you inside this jail, _can_ I?"  His voice, from his screams, was hoarse—near a point of breaking as it decrescendoed into something far more sincere.  "How can you doubt me _now_?"

"You work to her _ruin_, whether you _mean _to or _not_." The detective's voice was sleet.  The look that passed between the two mortal enemies finally told me who "she" was.  "Your act of kindness, God willing, _shall_ see you rewarded, Professor," Holmes continued, "but do _not_ fool yourself into believing the prize will come from Marie Hudson."

It has been written, 'Love wants for the beloved.'  If I did _not_ care for her," a whisper, forced through Moriarty's teeth, "then do you _really _believe I'd try so hard to keep my feelings _from_ her?  I'd not let her know, merely to ease my own pain, just how devoted I  . . . " His voice softened to nothingness.

"No." Holmes nodded once, slowly, and gestured me back from my hiding place in the shadows . . . much to my chagrin.  "No, Professor.  It is not your _heart _that I doubt.  Rather, it is your black _soul_."

"But my intentions are still _mine _to govern!  _I _am still _me_!"  

" . . . Precisely, Professor.  Precisely."

"Holmes . . ." Moriarty leaned into the bars, but this time there was a coaxing power in his eyes, in his voice, a pleading, persuasive energy that lured my friend.  " Would you have done what I did, no matter what, for Elizabeth Hardy?"

Holmes was immediately struck to the core.  He staggered physically under the blow of his only lover's name uttered by her killer.  "You're trying to deceive me . . . by pretending to have the capacity to love as a good man could," he gasped.  "As _I did_."

"_Please_, boy."  Now Moriarty was truly begging.  "A man can change.  How can I prove it to you?  A man can _change_.  I would . . . I would do _anything_ for that woman.  I promised her I would never involve her in my work. I can only promise _you _to keep _my_ part in that bargain.  Now, get me out of hereso that I can help _you_ _protect_ her, and the other women in this city."

"It's a promise you'd have to keep this time."

"And I would.  I _swear _it, Holmes."

My friend opened his mouth to speak, but fell silent once again.  It seemed that the very act he was resolved to commit had fallen back into ambivalence.  I didn't blame him.

Someone sauntered up between us; my bladder nearly gave way under me.  But it was only Ms. Adler.  "Sherlock, listen to me," she murmured into my friend's ear. I watched him shudder involuntarily at the sound, and saw his hard gray eyes soften.  Moriarty, too, was watching her with intense interest as she appealed to the detective.  Irene Adler laid a finger on Holmes's chest, tracing tender circles on it, softly persuading.  Indeed, merely watching her weave her bewitching persuasions was in itself entrancing.  "I loathe this man just as you do.  He is arrogant and self-serving and wicked, but _not _when it comes to Mrs. Hudson.  Whatever goodness she has awakened in this man's heart seems to have been permanent.  Remember what I told you last night, darling?  Love is not meant to _entrap_.  It is meant to _transform_.  I believe that you can trust him—at least in _this _matter. I believe that he will help us."  

Holmes looked his dubious lover in the eye.  Not a breath, not a hair, could come between their locked stare.  "I am placing my _trust_ in you, Irene," he confessed.  "Please consider what you are saying carefully, for I _will_ take any advice you give me to heart."

"What a joy to know that, my brilliant heart," she cooed, brushing his hair from his face.  "In that case, I repeat every word with twice the conviction."

The words were all Holmes needed to act immediately.  "Do you know how to pick a lock, Irene?"

"Most certainly, Sherlock."

"Then be my guest."  And he stepped aside, deferring to her. Surrendering to her judgment.  _Trusting_ her. It was a sacrifice as supreme and profound for Sherlock Holmes as relinquishing to the police had been for Moriarty. 

That same criminal now gaped at his arch nemesis, as though he had never expected to be awarded the freedom of which he had begged.  "Whatever passed between you two last night," he stammered at last, while Ms. Adler successfully picked the lock, "I am . . . it is . . . most extraordinary." And, gnawing on his lip like a lost child, he eased slowly from his cell as, together, Holmes and Ms. Adler, and I pulled it wide open.  His eyes became like a caged beast's.  My armpits grew wet just at the sight of his stalking, predatory gait and bared fangs.  "But now we must make haste. I confess I'd feel rather guilty if you were caught helping me escape."

"Right."  Holmes nodded at Ms. Adler, and she removed the oversized shirt and handed it to the Professor.  "Put your costume back on.  Pick up that load of dirty laundry over there, yes, good.  Now, both of you put on your best act as the prison custodians, take this upstairs to the laundry room, and meet us at the back door.  Moriarty, you had best take some of that laundry with you and pile it over your head—you can hide yourself that way rather flawlessly in the backseat of the motorcar."  Holmes sniffed, glancing at his pocketwatch.  "I doubt it will be more than five minutes before the alarm is raised at your escape.  Poor Lestrade will have acute indigestion, or cardiac arrest, I fear." 

"What should I do, old chap?" I piped in.

"Join me on the floor," Holmes grinned, plopping to the ground and placing himself in an awkward, strung-out pose.  On his way down, he made scuff marks on the concrete with his shoes, knocked over several chairs, and even broke the glass of a nearby gas lamp.  And then he gave me a hefty punch in the jaw.  I reeled backwards, spittle flying everywhere.

What the devil?  "Good God, Holmes!  What's gotten into you?"

"Dreadfully sorry, old friend," the detective chuckled, "but the only way you and I will get out of this guiltless is to have been 'horribly attacked and beaten' by the illustriously savage James Moriarty."

The criminal laughed softly, donning his costume.  "Indeed," he smirked.

"You mean you actually want me to pretend that he's knocked our blocks off?"

Holmes laughed harder.  "Just hit me, Watson.  Hard enough for a little bruise, now, no more.  Then get down on the floor and pretend to be unconscious.  There's a good fellow."

"Holmes . . . you just . . . _astound_ me sometimes."

"I know."

            After a good deal of photographs were taken, questions were fired, and admonishments were made _by_ Lestrade and _at_ Lestrade (alas for him, the Inspector General indeed caught wind of Moriarty's escape), Holmes and I were released from the prison and proceeded to the back of the building, where the motorcar, Mrs. Hudson and a large pile of clothing in it, awaited.

 "Your, ah, pageboy helped put the baggage in the car before she . . . ah, _he_ . . . departed for home," our landlady said, tossing us a wink.  Holmes joined her in the front seat, at the wheel, and we were off for Baker Street.

Once we were clear of the police station and prison, Moriarty peered out at us from the laundry pile in the back, alongside myself, and flung Mrs. Hudson's shawl over his head—thus totally concealed.  He had not spoken a word to the detective since Holmes opened his cell door and freed him.  And his face had not changed from its look of total shock. 

I tried to console myself against the very real fact that we were now guilty of aiding and abetting a criminal as we sped off away from the suspicions and clutches of Scotland Yard.  All for the greater good, Holmes would have preached, so I just kept my mouth shut.

"And . . .s-so," Moriarty began speaking at last—gravelly, hesitant, but talking nonetheless.  Talking was, after all, his particular talent.  "What did you discover in the morgue, Mr. Holmes?"

My friend smirked.  "You're welcome, Professor."

"You _know _I'm grateful, damn it!"  the criminal snarled, glaring away at the buildings that we sped past.  Mrs. Hudson's smile broadened. 

"Yes, actually.  I do.  In any case, I discovered . . . nothing monumental," Holmes shrugged, but the look of the truth-hunter had returned to his eyes, and I knew better.  "Simply that the autopsy report was incorrect.  It stated that the criminal deliberately avoided being bloodstained, and yet there are clearly large male handprints on Frances Coles's chest.  The body does not lie." 

Moriarty fell pensively silent, chewing his lip.  " . . . fascinating," he grunted.  "And our primary suspect is still that bookstore owner, James Stephen?"

"Yes."

"_Quite _fascinating," Moriarty repeated.  His eyes slid shut and he fell into meditation.  But not for long. 

A large, obnoxious red vehicle roared up behind us, smoothly accelerating until we were neck-and-neck.  "Hullo!" an old, gruff voice trumpeted.  "Care to race?"  A tiny man, in the whereabouts of 50 years and between insane and joyful, flailed his walking stick above his head with one arm, carelessly steering his motorcar with the other.  My jaw, Holmes's, and Moriarty's collectively dropped.  In his shock, the professor let go of Mrs. Hudson's shawl and his face was revealed to our visitor.

The Honourable Count, as his long-time acquaintance Mrs. Hudson now happily addressed him, tended to have that affect on less eccentric men.  And every man, to my knowledge, was less eccentric that the Honourable Count. 

Our visitor, hardly once glancing at the road in front of him, wasted no time in cajoling us as we rounded the corner to Baker Street.  "Well hullo, hul-_lo,_ Marie, and _every time _I see you, you've got that _same _ugly old boat of a motorcar but _twice_ as many suitors in it!  Ho! Ho-_ho_! You _naughty_ girl, you!  So who is _this_ lad here?"

The Count then did something supremely foolish, tapping his walking stick against the caged-animal Moriarty's side.  The criminal recoiled viciously and flashed him a look that would send the devil himself fleeing.  "Excuse me," he snarled, "for being displeased with the cane-beatings of a total _stranger_!"

Mrs. Hudson burst into golden laughter, heightening the Professor's confusion and gently assuaging his anger.  "This man is no stranger!" she managed to giggle.

He blinked at her.  "What?"

 "I say, and well, I _do _say!" the colorful old man thundered, poking him, this time, in the belly.  It was an impressive act considering he was still _theoretically_ driving his own car.  Moriarty doubled over and expelled a noise somewhat similar to the shriek of a dying gull.  "Right, right, you're the lad with the big dinosaur airplane that Marie blew out of the sky! Hoho, _capital_! _That _was an _awfully_ fun afternoon, what?" Yet another poke.  " Hum. A bit skinny like the _last _one who had eyes on you," and here the Count addressed Mrs. Hudson once again, "you know, that pipe-smoking detective that gallivants all over the countryside.  Ah, yes, hul-_lo_, Mr. Holmes, speak of the devil!  Hum!  Same _big nose_ too.  But aside that, this one looks like a _keeper_, Marie."

The Professor sputtered and hissed at him, face reddening.  He rose his own cane high above his head, and for the first time, the Count actually ducked in fear. "_You_!  How _dare _you refer to this _lady _on such familiar terms--?"

"Oh, Professor, we've been there already," I wearily supplied, waving the question off mid-statement.  "Surely you know Mrs. Hudson was once an aviatrix?" 

            Moriarty's cane wilted back to the earth.  "A . . . a what?  You . . ."  He flashed the lady a gaping stare.  The absurdity of a wondering toddler filled his countenance.  "You can _fly_?"

            "Well, for Heaven's Sake, Professor," Holmes injected curtly, still smarting at the stature of "the last large-nosed suitor," "it's not as if she's _Peter Pan_!"

            Here, thanks to the mercy of God, we arrived at 221 Baker Street's garage, and our outspoken friend was entreated to depart.  "Again, dearest Marie, when you learn that such a mundane car doesn't do you justice, my vehicle will _always_ be at your disposal!"  Then, quite raucously, the Count smacked his offending walking stick against the side of his motorcar as if it were a great steel horse, cried "Tally ho!" and was off. 

            " 'My _vehicle_?'  'At _your disposal_?'  Does that man fancy _innuendo_?" Moriarty spat, his eyes narrowed.  "Dirty old . . ."

" . . . I wonder what the neighbors think of us," I mused idly.  Uncharacteristically, Holmes ignored me, crouching silently over the wheel long after the car had stopped. 

Moriarty stood and stretched, grimacing, rubbing the places that the Count's stick had inspected.  Mrs. Hudson turned suddenly and faced him, grinning, and seized the professor's own walking stick. She brandished it in the air, giggling uncontrollably.  At last, in a voice that mimicked the Count's excellently, she cried, "What ho, James Moriarty! A 'keeper,' are you, indeed?"

With that, their eyes met for the first time in our entire drive back from the East End, and together they burst into laughter. Even I could not help a few spare chuckles. 

"That's very good, Madam!" Moriarty snickered, pointing at Mrs. Hudson, forgetting the restraint he had promised to Holmes only an hour earlier. "You may do what you wish with me, but I _doubt_ anyone '_keeps_' _you_!"

 The widow leaned close to his face, her eyes shining.  "Do you indeed?" She reached for his gesturing hand. Their fingers entwined.

And suddenly Holmes came back to life.  "It's getting late.  Perhaps Mrs. Hudson would like some rest after such a trying afternoon."   Desperation played at his words.  I could see why:  He was staring fixedly at the landlady and her prescribed "keeper." 

"Now, Mr. Holmes," she rebutted, "you are very, very sweet, but that is _precisely_ the kind of talk that I do not wish to hear _anymore_!"

Holmes stood in his seat, making the car swerve to the point that I retreated.  "Because you didn't heed that kind of talk, you almost got _killed _today . . ."

"But I _didn't_ get killed, did I?" she flung back at him far more fiercely, gesturing at Moriarty.  "I trust in my _own_ resources _and_ in those of my _friends_, Mr. Holmes!"  And with that she strode from the room without once looking back.

In her absence, the detective took three strides to cross the room, nose-to-nose with the smug Moriarty.  "You already broke another promise to me, sir," he growled.  " I hope it is worth _hurting _the lady of which you made that promise." 

"Mark me, sir," Moriarty hissed back.  "No harm will ever come to Marie Hudson by _my_ hands."

"_Don't_ make _more _promises that you _can't keep_." My friend turned on his heel and left the garage, following in Mrs. Hudson's footsteps.

I glanced at the professor's face before following.  For some reason, it was weighted with concern. Concern—and fear. 

Some alterations took place at 221 B Baker Street that afternoon, to be fine-tuned in the following month.  It was decided that the magnitude of details surrounding the Ripper crimes were so involved, so crucial, that Moriarty and his men would be allowed to stay in our abode at any hour of the day or night.  For the first time since I arrived in the boarding house, I locked my door before going to bed. 

Irene Adler made daily visits to our home.  Try as I might, I never seemed to be able to react to her immediate presence without a mixture of nervousness and enchantment.  Sometimes the illustrious opera star and adventuress graced us all with her latest information on the Ripper crimes.  But more often she cast an alluring look at Holmes, strode into his bedroom, and wiggled her fingers at him, bidding him follow her.  Often they even went out together, for long hours during the day and night.  What they did together, alone in his room and in the London parks, I could not be sure.  But I could certainly speculate, from the calm bliss on his face, and the satisfied jaunt in his step each night when their meetings ended. 

"Watson, I am feeling something rather familiar these days," he told me one afternoon over tea, a lopsided grin plastered on his young face.

"What would that be?" I would try to ask as casually as possible, glancing at him over the brim of my newspaper.

"I am not sure . . . I will have to ponder on that a bit more.  All I know is that I've felt it before, and it's all due to Irene." 

_I believe it's called l'amour, _I thought smugly.  But I would not dare say it out loud:  It would have frightened him far too much.

Mrs. Hudson began to receive visits from that strange bar singer under Elena Smith's employ—the girl named Katherine Ferrell.  She arrived almost daily for tea and chatting about old times, of schoolgirl days gone by.  Never once did she speak a civil word to Holmes or myself.  A few times her fiancée, none other than Sebastian Moran, accompanied her.  He worked very hard at rekindling some modicum of friendship between us, and eventually I allowed him to do so.  No sense in conspiring with the enemy in a manner any more uncomfortable than already existed. 

The most marked change to Holmes's process of deduction was that, on those many restless nights when, torturing his own mind, raking it for answers, he paced the floors of his bedroom, tinkering with his chemistry set and shuffling through old documents, he no longer did it alone.  He had found a companion—one that was, somehow, simultaneously the most and the least logical.

I overcame the initial corrosion to my self-worth after the first few nights that I passed my friend's dim, cracked-open door.  Each time, without fail, his armchair was occupied by a bowed-over, brooding Professor Moriarty, while the detective himself bestially stalked about the chambers, eyes wide and weary, pipe in mouth.  Both of them wore their dressing gowns and robes but neither looked in the least bit discouraged by their web of studies and theorizations. Rather, fierce excitement, that of two children engrossed in a challenging toy puzzle, permeated the candle-lit room. Periodically, Holmes would pause, look to the Professor, who, as if sensing a question poised intangible in the air between them, would lift his gaze as well.  Both would grin with anticipation, glee, their shoulders taut—awaiting the Jack-in-the-Box of the next deduction to pop out into conversation.  Then the detective spoke. Words too low to be audible were mumbled, and grunts of decided disapproval or of interest, followed by more conjectures and suggestions, returned.  Both gestured animatedly, illustrating their thoughts in the invisible air, still keeping their voices soft.  At last one shrugged and resolved to agree with the other, evidently in puzzled defeat, for Holmes would then return to his anxious pacing and Moriarty would again glare ponderously at the ground, clutch his brow in his hand, and contemplate. 

Holmes's former mentor had automatically been taken into confidence of the most intimate degree; those two prodigal minds probably found their modes of thought easily compatible, if not identical, and sought a strange comfort in collaborating with each other—at least as long as the name of Marie Hudson was not mentioned. 

Moriarty had been allowed into a harem of cognitions and ponderings into which I had always, icily and tersely, been forbidden.  The realization at first stung me. However, the fact that Holmes had not taken his cocaine needle from the shelf since in Irene Adler and the Professor's company gave me cause to put my injured pride aside. 

            But then events beyond my witness occurred and changed the comfortable flow of our detective work irrevocably.  I do not know why I didn't expect it to happen from the first moment that James Moriarty looked at Marie Hudson in our boarding house stairwell and said "Hello."

            As the clues towards convicting James Stephen of the Ripper crimes built, Moriarty slept several nights in Holmes's study, on the couch just outside the detective's bedroom door.  One evening in early February, he was beginning to undress for bed when something—someone—interrupted him. 

                "I can not sleep, Professor.  So I came to find you.  I want to show you my secret to happiness," came a velvet voice in the dark.  Mrs. Hudson.  "I know it is something you need to understand." 

            Moriarty felt each individual hair on the back of his neck and arms prickling.  The room was suddenly stifling hot.  "You are not afraid to go out at night with a convicted criminal, milady?"  He frowned at his own hesitation.  He reached to loosen his bowtie, for he suddenly felt strangled.  Embarrassedly, he noted that he had already removed it. 

            "I fear nothing when I walk arm in arm with a gentleman," the voice replied, and the lady, still fully dressed, slid closer to him; her delicate silhouette danced in and out of the dim, cool moonlight.  "What say you, good sir?"

            The Professor was flattered. And a bit stunned.  He rose, shirt still roguishly half-unbuttoned.  He tore his cloak from the rack and slung it on his back, paused to peer at Mrs. Hudson, and then, taking it off, rested it gently on her small shoulders. "Lead on, Madame."

            She smiled.

            "It is a startlingly brisk evening!"  Mrs. Hudson clutched Professor Moriarty's cloak closer to her thin frame as the two strode, arms hooked, along the docks of the Thames.  The brimy air teased her thick coif and freed a few bold tendrils. "You are truly a native of Egypt?" 

Moriarty squared his shoulders, suddenly stiff-necked and rigid, as the question passed Mrs. Hudson's lips.  His strides slowed with his wary response. "I . . . am, indeed.  Why do you ask?"

            The landlady's lips experimented, mutely, with gentle ways of addressing the professor's brittle confidence.  His arm grew taut around hers and his dark eyes had found sudden fascination with a nest of gulls on a bobbing buoy across the harbor.  He cleared his throat twice, but it did not rid the gravelly texture in his voice.

Delicately she proceeded, " Well, I should imagine that you might find this damp, cold English weather intolerable!  How do you endure it?"

            He knew, immediately, that she was probing his psyche.  But the tender respect with which she questioned him gave him cause to cooperate.  His voice crawled along at a bottomless register. "I have learned to grudgingly respect Ireland, the home of my father.  But there are _many_ things about England that I find intolerable.  This place has more of my contempt than I'd care to share with you."

"Why not?"

            He grinded his teeth behind his lips, and turned to hide a scarlet flush in his thin cheeks.  His arm at last slid like a fleeing feral cat from under hers as he stopped walking altogether. "I don't wish to frighten you with my blacker thoughts, madam."

            "Professor." She curled her fingers back around his forearm and squeezed, tugging him along, making him turn back. He was alarmed—and impressed—by her persistence.  "I spent only a few days in your abode, but it was long enough, and I am clever enough, to determine a great deal of the contents of your mind."

            A brougham shimmied down the street towards them.  Moriarty's face was anonymous to all but the law enforcers of the Isles, as he had so many accomplices—thus he was free to make use of public amenities such as transportation.  One hand distractedly risen to hail the cabbie, he let loose a hearty laugh.  "Oh! Really?  That is an interesting prospect.  I _certainly_ don't doubt the strength of _your _wits, milady.  Perhaps you _have_ analyzed me somewhat near the mark.  Please, do go on!"

            She remained cautiously somber, despite his apparent delight.  "Mr. Holmes has shared much of your history with Dr. Watson and myself.  Your born name is Ethar.  You were orphaned as a young boy during a skirmish between your village and some British troops.  And then your paternal family in Ireland all but rejected you as proof incarnate of their father's infidelity to their mother.  Your existence has been acknowledged by the British with scorn and resentment at best, slaughter and abandonment at worst.  It is likely that, from your days leading the Rhamme Tep Cult to your present organizations in London, you have adopted a life of malicious crime to exact revenge on the culture that you see as cruel, false, and oppressive."  She stepped an inch closer, fixing a hard stare on him.  For the first time in all his recollection, the gaze of another mortal made him squirm.  "In order, further, to reciprocate the suffering that you were given. How close am I to . . .the mark?"

They fell into a pulsing silence as they mounted the cab.  Moriarty waited, glaring at the cab floor, while Mrs. Hudson calmly called out their destination—the London Air Field.  The Professor bit his lip as he pounded his cane on the brougham roof, and they scrambled away across the cobblestones.  When he spoke again, it was but a whisper, with tremendous respect, subtle but still choked with feelings violently stirred by her deductions.  "You _are _a brilliant young woman, aren't you, milady?"  His eyes—smoldering eyes, as feverishly alive as those of Hound but twice as malevolent, twice as covert about his inner thoughts—those eyes now flashed.  "You have summarized my aim in life most adroitly."  His hands encircled his walking stick and squeezed until his white knuckles threatened to burst. 

            Mrs. Hudson's heartbeat thundered in her ears.  "May I speak boldly, and risk impertinence, without . . . fear?"

            His stare snapped again across her fair little face, and the grip on his walking stick loosened.  A deep line of sorrow cut across his brow.  "Have I, then, ever unwittingly given you cause to fear me?"

            She smiled.  "No, truly.  You have not.  I have told you, and still attest, that you have always been a gentleman towards me.  I refer only to the nature of your past, and present, 'aim in life.'"

            "Ah." Again he cleared his throat, withdrew his handkerchief, coughing violently into it.  He turned it over, compulsively, nervously, in his long fingers.  "Please speak, then."

She frowned.  "Are you quite alright?"

            "Perfectly."  His hands played at the kerchief's corners with twice the agitation.  "Please, please speak."  He glared out the carriage window, gulping in fresh air.

She almost heard a lingering note of urgency in his words, but chose not to pursue it.  "You are such an intellectual man. Rational, ruled by your cranial perceptions of reality.  How, then, can you not discern the fundamental difference between the crimes of a few scourges and those of an entire society?"

Moriarty spoke slowly and firmly. "If you can show me the British citizen who has not viewed me from the very start with disgust and anger, I shall find that distinction that you mention worth noticing. Can you accept that challenge?"

"You did not expose the British Isles to much of your good side. You gave up on us too quickly, Professor. You were barely in your prime when you gave in to criminal life."

He growled.  "Answer my question, please." 

"There is Sebastian."

"No.  We are bound by a common hatred for England, a common wronged youth.  Colonel Moran and I have no foundation for friendship aside our own basest, most monstrous goals.  He only pretends to care for me."

She swallowed back her challenge of such skewed reasoning and tried again.  "There is Todd.  And of course Smiley."  She giggled softly with the thought of the clumsy young pirate of whom she was fond.

"Paid for their service," he snarled. "And they are terrified of what I might do if they disrespected me."

"I do not believe that is true.  Smiley speaks of you as if you were his father."

Moriarty was resolute.  "Gratitude for a kindness I paid his family when he was a child.  He would not have possessed those feelings if I had done nothing to earn them. They are conditional."

" . . .There is . . . was . . . Mr. Holmes.  I know he was once your favorite pupil, and you his favorite teacher, before he stepped in the way of your vengeance."

His voice became cold and hard as metal.  "_That_, madam, _was_ toobold."

"Oh, James . . ." she murmured, buckling under weariness, looking out her own window.

He fell still.  "What did you call me?"

She did not answer.  Instead she leaned close to him and put her hand over his.  Supreme earnest filled her words.  "There is _me_."

His jaw dropped, and only a strangled wheeze came.  "Too good to be true," he managed at last. Again a fierce coughing spell seized him.  He doubled over in his seat.

            She waited until he was composed, and ventured to rest a hand on his shaking shoulder.  Still he spewed into the handkerchief; she stroked the back of his neck once, gently. He let her hand stay there this time, and slowly came up for breath. Sweat beaded his brow.

"I fear I may have asked you to comfort me through a restless night at the expense of your health," she fretted.  "Do forgive me."

            "There is nothing to forgive," he breathed.  "The air is just . . . very close in here.  I smell ashes.  I smell something burning, don't you?"

            Mrs. Hudson inspected the carriage, peered outside—no chimneys alight, no bonfires under the bridges. "No, Professor, I am afraid I do not." 

But she did notice that beads of perspiration, at first minute, were cascading down his cheeks.  His eyes went bloodshot, half-hooded, in a lulling sort of trance.  "God," he choked, "The British, the British.  I was a _child_ that first time I met the British.  You know what amazes me the most is . . . they came so _fast_. A sandstorm."

"W-what?"

" My father had left us by then, but they came soon, laughing and shooting off their guns, waving bottles of whiskey. There was a quarrel in the street with some natives, many shot dead, stabbed, and a few of them got bored of it and thought it would be funny to satisfy themselves inside one of the civilian huts.  We had no time to run . . .they had no compassion at all.  No honor.  She hid me behind the hut, and then the men came. . ." 

Mrs. Hudson shook Moriarty's arm, at first gently and then hard.  "Professor, you are not yourself." 

He swallowed back a gag.  "I looked at the palm trees and counted every vein in every leaf while I heard them grabbing her, knocking over the clay pots. Jesus, then they took her.  They took my _mother_.  Flung her white dress over her head and then they . . . _Jesus_. Wearing their red coats with the brass buttons, didn't even bother to take off their own . . their own . . . they just unzipped their trousers and then right back up.  _Easier_ that way, while she cried.  But they couldn't speak the native tongue—they wouldn't have cared anyway, if they had understood what she was begging them not to do.  _Bastards_. While it _burned_ outside all around us."  He bared his fangs against another rheumatic fit, shoulders heaving.  Sweat drizzled down his neck in the cold London air.

She said it loudly now.  "Sir, you are making yourself ill. _James_, come back now, come back _out _of it!"

He did not hear her. A gap of decades and continents had emerged between them, years of atrocity, and he was, suddenly, flung back to the day that the seed of his rage was planted.  "It _burned_.  That's the smell.  It all burned—the _whole village_.  People running about burning alive.  One of the soldiers came behind the hut and relieved himself next to me.  I glared at him and told him I would _kill them all_ someday—_not_ an empty threat, you know." Moriarty paused to utter a shuddering laugh, one that chilled Mrs. Hudson, but she had given up trying to calm him.  "He was crying but I _wasn't_.  I forgot how.  I don't know why.  He had not been one of them that violated my mother—he came outside so that he would not have to watch them do it—but he didn't _stop_ them either, damn him, so the _coward _might as well have been walking around breaking things inside like the rest of them.  _Waxflatter—_that was the one.  I followed him all the way back to England where he and I ended up teaching together, at the preparatory academy where Hound and Watson met—and I waited to get that old fool and his partners in infamy, yes, and his niece Elizabeth Hardy, the sickening little cherub, she was the one that fell in love with Holmes . . . I was . . .ten? Twelve when my village burned?  I don't recall. Some ignorant ass was drunk and he dropped a match on a woodpile, and then my mother fell into it . . . no, they _pushed  _her into it because they were done with her, and there was . . . fire.  Fire.  And then I was alone with . . . I. . .was alone. She . . . she survived but . . . no, I was _quite _alone.  And then they found me later that evening, and . . . they . . . they _enjoyed themselves_ at . . . at _my_ expense, too . . . in front of . . . her."

Mrs. Hudson's hand flew to cover her mouth, to stifle a horrified sob. 

He looked at her; but he didn't seem to see her.  His droning voice mesmerized her as sleep might lure a woman on her deathbed.  "It wasn't the first fire, either.  My father returned to his station near us—he was a Royal Troop.  He would have nothing to do with my mother then—scorched and ugly as she had become.  He sent me to Ireland to my grandfather's estate—a place called Heaven's Gate, now occupied by my half-brother James William and his wife.  It . . . was the last time I would see either of my parents."

"What happened?" Mrs. Hudson dared to ask.

 Moriarty's throat gurgled, strained as if he were about to be sick on the cab floor.  He restrained it.  "That man—Waxflatter—and his friend, one Chester Cragwitch—they were entrepreneurs—business partners who built a bloody hotel in my village atop a sacred burial ground for five Egyptian princesses."

"The ones you . . .wanted to replace using English girls—girls like Elizabeth."

He did not—or chose not to—hear her.  "The bastards _not only_ desecrated holy ground, they _also_ unearthed the bodies and proposed to spirit them off to England.  My village and several others revolted, and this time they were _annihilated_ by the official intervention of the British Army.  Both of my parents were . . . both of them were killed.  When I got word—oh, God, when I got word, I _knew _my purpose in life was to _destroy all that is sacred _to this bloody country, just as my _own_ homeland was destroyed—"

The brougham jolted to a halt at the vast flat expanse of the air field.  With this Moriarty regained his senses, and covered his face.  "Oh, God," he gasped, heartfelt, "Oh . . . God, Marie, I . .. I'm _sorry_, I _never _would have in my right mind told you—"  He froze.  " . . . I . . . forgive me, it was too forward of me to call a lady by her first name."  Then he removed his monocle and pretended to be extremely occupied with polishing it.  He wiped his forehead hastily free of sweat with his shirt sleeve. 

She shook her head furiously.  "Stop apologizing.  Stop. _Never_ be sorry for how you feel about . . . about _that_." 

They sat again in silence.  He was unsure whether she was referring to his sudden psychological flood of hideous memories, or to his improper reference to her person.  But he was too ashamed to ask.  "Enough of me.  Please . . . let's share some happy memories.  Tell me about your husband."  He darted from the brougham, offering a shaky but steadfastly chivalrous hand to help her dismount. 

She hardly felt comfortable simply breaking into chatter about a past far more filled with joy than his.  But he had requested it, so she obliged, hoping to soothe him.  "Jim was a wonderful man," she began, stepping down onto the fresh earth of the air field.  "Not just doting, but . . . passionate somehow, in this casual, calm way.  Just . . . so sure of himself and his own dreams.  He always . . . there was always some outlandish idea in his brain that he had to get out on paper, in a little carved-out model, in some concrete way, so that he could share it with me, and then, with my blessing, and with the blessing of his best friend Tommy Nesbitt, another pilot, he'd patent it and try it out."  A soft giggle interrupted her description of her late spouse. "He was such a brilliant . . . fool."

Peace, and amusement, seeped into Moriarty's frenzied face, loosening it.  He exhaled slowly and spoke.  "An innovator, was he?  Marvelous. A pilot, right—like yourself?" 

"Oh, yes.  Yes.  You know, the day he proposed marriage to me, he told me, '_Marie, you make my spirit touch the clouds.  Now my fingers are itching to do the same—and they will someday, my lover—you inspired me_,' and other wonderful romantic nonsense like that.  Then he would tell me that he and I would both '_walk alongside the larks and pigeons someday_.'  And after that, the rest of his . . . the rest of the time that I knew him, he devoted every spare minute to designing airplanes.  I didn't mind—all his rhetoric about birds and clouds and the air had me bewitched with flying, too."  She strolled towards one of the barns that served as a hangar, but as she spoke, Moriarty had to walk faster and faster to keep her pace.  By the time they reached the nearest few planes, he was sprinting.  "So in between cooking and embroidering classes, I studied aviation like a fiend, and helped him design the sole plane that successfully became airborne."

"Madam!"  the professor exclaimed, impulsively seizing her hands.  His face shed the last morsel of its gloom in his epiphany.  "You are something of a _genius_, then!  Zounds! What a memory to cherish, no?" 

            But something on her face had gone gray.  Her eyes roved, and her body went limp.  Moriarty felt his chest tightening again.  He grimaced.  "I . . .fear I've said something to offend you . . ."

            "No," she blurted at last, but her eyes were suddenly brimming with a coming deluge.  "Oh, such silliness, really! You must think I'm trying to compete with you for the most tragic past . . ." Her voice broke and she fell silent.

            "Please," the professor interrupted gently, bending down to face her eye-to-eye.  He dared to brush her cheek with his fingers. Yes, it _was_ like touching the clouds.  Jim Hudson had been a wise man. "Whatever pain _you_ faced, you did _not_ deserve. The very _least _I can give _you_ is an open ear.  Speak."

            A quavering noise escaped her.  Her bowed head rose, and he saw it streaked with tears.  He had never seen her crying—not even distraught—before this moment.  Few men had.  And nothing had ever, to the Great Napoleon of Crime's shock, evoked such deep or immediate pain from his core as the sight of her suffering. 

He was astonished that he even knew how to feel for someone aside himself. 

Stumbling over his eagerness to smite her sorrow, he fumbled about for the handkerchief he'd employed to calm himself only moments ago.  His hands shook terribly as he offered it to her—so much that once he dropped it, and had to recover it from the dirt, before she could take it from him. "Oh . . . there, my dear. . . my . . ." What was he to call her—what term of endearment that would not sound inappropriate, that would not give her hope of some impossible spark between them?  But ye gods, if only . . .

He cleared his throat, banishing his frustration as best he could.  "Please take this, Mar . . . Mrs. Hudson.  Do tell me, now, please."

            She buried her face in the cloth, so that he could only hear her confession through muffled whimpers:  "That same plane we flew on the day we departed for our honeymoon—and that same plane was the one that . . . disintegrated midair . . . and he . . ."

            "_Burned_," Moriarty breathed, so softly that she could not hear.  His eyes grew distant as, in his mind, her horrifying memories of loss entwined with his.  "Oh, Christ." Then, louder, hands wringing at his sides, for he felt so useless, so unable to comfort her: "You can _not_ blame yourself for your husband's death.  You hear me?  So many unforeseen elements are involved in the maintenance and execution of an aircraft—trust me, I have built _dozens_ of them, you know, like that prehistoric bird.  Come, now, you must understand!  Why, it probably had _nothing _to do with the actual design of—"

            "James."  She said his name, his _name_, so clearly, so firmly, that he could not claim to having imagined it.  It riveted him still.  Like magic, composure had seized Marie Hudson's personage. The resolve that he was far more accustomed to seeing on her face had returned; it was still wet, but shining through with sweet optimism.  He wasn't sure whether to be troubled or relieved by her obvious dodge of his comforting words.  "I want to take a plane ride," she continued.  "It is my secret happiness—it did not diminish, but only increased, after my husband's death—I am touching the clouds _for _him now.  It is what I want to share with you tonight.  Let's go flying, and be happy for once. Let's leave those memories beneath the ground where they belong.  That's why we're here."  She removed her gloves, tossed his cloak into the nearest airplane, and leapt into the pilot's seat.  "Coming or not?"

            He blinked, and grinned.  "A throng of Inspector Lestrades would not stop me." She laughed as he boarded the passenger seat, rapping his walking stick on the side. "Take off, madam!" 

            "Wait!"  She shot from her seat like a rocket.  "I forgot!  I can never fly a plane without walking barefoot at the wings!"

            The professor cocked his head. "Pardon?"

            "Well one must be careful not to break them, but . . ."  She lifted her feet, a ballerina, and padded across one wing.  "Take off your shoes, Professor, and go out the other wing like me, so we keep the aircraft in balance!"

            "Oh, Madam, really, I would feel foolish . . ."

            "Do it! You would only be silly _not_ to!"  She pirouetted on the tip of the wing, and the plane began to lurch.  "Besides, it's only the two of us! Hurry, now, or I shall fall," here she spread her arms wide, a hammy, giggling little girl and a graceful, swan-like woman all at once.  She feigned a dramatic swoon.  "And you shall have to fling yourself from the plane and rescue me for the _second_ time in one month!"

            "Fine, fine!" he chuckled.  "All's one, when you put it that way.  Here I go."  He jerked off his shoes, hesitated only a moment before taking off the socks, too, and tiptoeing onto the other wing.  Under his added weight, the plane began to tilt in his direction. 

            "Oh, my, I forgot you're larger than me, didn't I? Well, stay where you are!" she cried gleefully, moving farther out to her side of the wing. 

            "I'm not sure I like the idea of staying here when you move farther away," he mock-pouted.  "Makes me terribly lonely.  What is the point of all this, lady?"

            "To relish the moment, sir!"  Mrs. Hudson skipped in little circles in her spot, gesturing at the tiny details of the plane's wingspan.  " Just think about this marvelous creation!  The inspiration of God put to concrete completion in man's hands! Genius put to form! You're walking on a _miracle_, you know!"

            "Yes, maybe," he breathed, too softly for her to hear, but his eyes communicated all of his thoughts in the ten-foot span between them.  "But I think I'm also _looking_ at one."

            "That was marvelous, wasn't it?"  Sherlock Holmes's landlady, her hair helplessly tousled by the wind of the sky, pulled her airplane into its hangar and leapt from her seat. 

            Moriarty smiled, clambering down after her—remembering birds, stars, and clouds, among other wonders within the past twenty minutes that they were airborne.  She was genuinely the best pilot he had ever known—himself included.  "Exhilarating, Madam."  He whetted his fingers and attempted to smooth his own wildly disheveled hair—uselessly.  They regarded each other and burst into laughter.  "This is one of those times," he chuckled, reaching out to smooth her hair from her face, "when I am happy that within five or ten years, I'll start going bald."

            "Are you really _that _old?" she blurted.  Immediately she realized the bluntness of the remark.  She winced.  "Oh, dear, I mean . . ."

            He laughed again, louder and harder than before.  "It's quite alright.  I'm 37, milady, but I'm glad male-pattern baldness is not obvious to you!"  He winked at her playfully. 

            "But," she teased, coyly slipping loose from his grasp, skipping along barefoot in the dewy, chilly grass, "in those 37 years towards your utterly bald status, you have done quite a number of intellectually extraordinary feats."  She weaved in and out of the other airplanes, appearing and vanishing in the shadows.  Enchanting him. 

            Moriarty's eyebrows rose as he pursued her. "You're awfully tactful to refer to criminal schemes as 'intellectually extraordinary feats.' Tell me, then, do you actually condone my behavior?" He grinned.  "Does the angel of Baker Street truly harbor a mischievous streak?"  They reached the awaiting brougham; playfully, he cornered her at the door.  "Well?"

            "No, sir," she gently chastised, " I do _not_ approve of criminal behavior. I'm in quite a dilemma, you see.  Because I _do _approve of the man who committed those crimes.  Yet I can forgive him of all of his past deeds, if he apologizes for but _one_ of them."  

            Moriarty froze in place.  He scanned Mrs. Hudson's face, framed by all that wild golden hair, for some sign of jest.  Disconcertingly, she had grown serious. 

            " . . . Why would I be _sorry_?"  he asked.  And for all his desire to please her—for all his genius, too—he was truly puzzled. Regret—remorse—had never even occurred to him.  Not yet, at least. He backed away from her.

            To his horror, Mrs. Hudson's face fell—and everything magical about the evening was stripped raw.  "I already mentioned before how much the Air Post meant to me when it was first beginning to function last year," she explained, in a quiet, disappointed voice.  "Do not tell me that you really think that what you did to sabotage those airplanes did not hurt _me_, too." 

            "But those stamps would have gained me a _fortune_, and . . . and none of those pilots _actually _got hurt," he growled, trying desperately to harness his temper, to use rationalization as his defense.  But he realized, in the back of his mind, that the fact he even needed to defend himself had made him lose already.  "And . . . well, how could I have bloody _known _it would hurt _you?_ I didn't know you were an aviatrix until this past month . . ."

            "But you _did _know that my husband was a pilot!"  A fierce, formidable scowl flashed across her face.  Anger built in her voice, making it stronger than he ever would have expected.  "You _did _know that I was a widow, and that I _loved_ him!  I wouldn't ask you to be sorry _then,_ having only just met me, but _now_? And . . .and really ,even then, after I poured my _heart_ out to you about that brooch! You knew even _then_ what Jim and his life meant to me!" 

            "Why can't you _understand_?"  he hissed.  "It was just _business_, Marie!  I can't stop business just for an acquaintance's _sensitive _spots!  Damn it, listen, it was just _personal profit_!"

            "_Exactly_," she snapped.  "Apparently that's _still_ your priority, isn't it? _Personal profit.  Revenge_.  After this night, after all our conversations, you've still learned _nothing_." She mounted the carriage and all but shouted the destination of Baker Street to the bewildered cabbie.  "I only wanted to know that I was more important to you than that.  Now I have my answer.  And _don't_ call me _Marie_.  You _clearly_ aren't as familiar with me as I _thought_ you were."

            Moriarty's head reeled with rage, sorrow, and mangled trust.  His chest threatening to burst, he spoke before even thinking.  "Well, I did learn one thing just now:  You set _impossibly _high expectations for the men that follow in your husband's footprints."  He almost hesitated as he watched her face crumble to tears.  But the pain of her disapproval had cut a man so bent on perfection to the core, and in five seconds, playfulness had been maimed by fury-and there was no turning back.  " _Do_ forgive me for not being a _saint _like _Jim Hudson_ was.  Forgive me for my _disgusting_ past, and what it's done to my 'priorities.'  Oh, but most of all, forgive me for pouring out my _life story_ to you and getting _slapped in the face_ for my honest feelings!  There, Madam, _there's_ the apology you wanted!  _Happy now_?"

            The cab lurched forward, departing from the airfield. Mrs. Hudson had begun to sob, turning from the Professor's angrily shouting form, but now the jolt flung her against him.  For a moment he could smell that ginseng, honey and summer of her delicate body, of her hair, and he was utterly silenced.  And _sorry._  Oh, so very sorry—for anything she wished. 

A sudden lump in his throat threatened to strangle him.  But he managed to speak, so much gentler, now:  "I . . . what am I _saying_? Mrs. Hudson, my pride is the worst part of me.  You're _right_, I . . ."  She had fallen into the cradle of his arms—God, she fit there so perfectly, like it was meant to be—but when he tried to hold her, she tore away from him and returned to the opposite side of the carriage.  He wrapped his arms around the void where she had just been—around the void of _himself_—and squeezed.  It was so _cold_ now—she was right, it was a _very _cold night.  "I should have thought of you then.  I should _not _have done what I did, for _your _sake.  If I were _really _a wise man, I would think of you every hour of every day.  Forgive me.  _Please_." 

            Silence.  Scornful silence.  She would not look at him once, but she let her tears fall unrestrained down her cheeks.  Letting him watch her suffering, but not once letting him help stop it. 

            It was the worst punishment he could have imagined.

            Mrs. Hudson did not give Professor Moriarty much of a chance to make up for his brutish outburst once they arrived back at 221 Baker Street.  She fled the carriage, flung open the door, and with fresh tears falling, ran upstairs to Sherlock Holmes's study.  She flung the door shut behind her.

            Moriarty stood alone in the foyer, for a moment and yet an eternity, wishing himself dead.  He stared fixedly up the steps, his eyes empty. 

            At this point Smiley Marrow and I, both of us men given to our appetites, arrived from the kitchen, where I had fixed us a modest early morning snack of biscuits and cheese. I had heard the sound of footsteps and a woman weeping, and was highly alarmed, as I had believed our landlady was in bed hours past.  I nearly dropped my pewter tray when I spotted the Professor standing there looking hideously ill, or grieved, or perhaps both, in our stairwell, fully dressed and yet somehow disheveled, and Holmes himself descending the stairs in his nightrobe, looking angrier than I have ever remembered him looking. 

 "The evidence is clear, Moriarty."  Holmes's expression became sleet.  He flung an arm at the stairs moments ago occupying the weeping lady.  "You have attempted a repulsive impropriety against Mrs. Hudson.  And I won't stand for it."

Smiley, gawking at us in the foyer, let loose a gasp and turned to run down the hallway to the guest bedrooms.

Moriarty drew himself upright, hackles arisen, and snarled.  His hand flew to his walking stick.  His knuckles whitened as he squeezed it.  "How _dare_ you imply such a vile act!  Against such a woman, no less!"

 "With logic backing me, Professor!" Holmes leered in his nemesis's face, jerked hard on Moriarty's unbuttoned shirt, gesturing at lipstick-stained fingers curled about his cane.  "Every aspect about your demeanor and appearance—and hers—suggests it!"

A lump of fear and disgust clogged my windpipe, and my hand flew to my nightgown collar to loosen it.  "Holmes, really. . ." I began, if anything, to protect my friend from the Professor's impending wrath. 

Moriarty, however, sneered—a slow, serpentine expression crawling up his long muzzle.  "Foiled at last, are you?"  But his voice trembled, belying the scornful calm of his features.  "Cupid's Arrow blinds, I see.  It seems, Mr. Holmes, that your 'flawless' deductive reasoning at last failed you.  Perhaps your senses were muddled by your constant competition with _me_." 

Holmes reproached him with a tone of steel.  "Competition?  Do enlighten me."

The Professor licked his lips, and nodded, once, at the empty stairwell, and its former occupant.  "Mrs. Hudson came to me precisely two hours past because her mind was troubled and she could not sleep.  Why she approached me rather than any other gentleman or lady with her heavy heart, I myself still wonder.  But I am sure your landlady will be glad to inform you that my shirt has been unbuttoned since long before she came to me, and I have been no less clothed in the duration of our company, nor she.  The tear on her dress is from a wayward airplane rudder—she took me for a ride, you see—as would explain her disheveled hair.  I escorted her to the airfield.  And the lipstick evidenced on my hands I offered her from her own change purse at her request. I fumbled with it for a bit, you see." A smirk coated his words as Holmes's face gradually fell.  "Turbulent up there in the sky, you know. Tell me, now, old boy . . ." He rested a hand, achingly condescending, on Holmes's taut shoulder.  "Does it make you _that _nervous when I'm alone with her?"

The detective's nostrils curled.  "Are you issuing a challenge, sir?"  He bucked Moriarty's hand viciously.

 Smiley, his face pale, returned, having fetched Sebastian and Todd.  The Colonel joined me at the Grandfather clock by the stairs, still smelling of late night coffee and tobacco, and playing nervously with his nearly finished cigarette.  He rose one hand high, a hybrid of pious minister and feared military man. "Gentlemen!"  he attempted gently but firmly to calm the two formidable minds.  But like my call for peace, his voice fell on deaf ears. 

Moriarty glanced sidelong at his friend and two lackeys, and almost seemed prepared to withdraw from battle.  But then he scoffed, and struck with his final dose of venom.  "Tut, Mr. Holmes.  Such an elementary question.  After all, do I not always wish to watch you _crash_?"

Holmes's blood was coursing fast now, his eyes livid.  Rarely had I seen him so easily provoked to anger by his arch foe.  Rather, the situation was most often reversed.  "What do you mean by that?" he hissed.  But it was clear by his rage that he anticipated the answer. 

" You forget so easily."  Moriarty's ears flattened against his skull and he bared menacing fangs. His voice, goading, rose loud.  "Years ago, when you were but a schoolboy, you remained a bachelor by my hands.  Like Miss Hardy, Mrs. Hudson shall _never_ become 'Mrs. Holmes' while _I_ live!"

With this, Holmes abandoned reason, and thrust himself on his mortal enemy.  Moriarty let out a roar of welcome as if Holmes had at last fulfilled a desperate craving.  Indeed, as if they _both _had lusted for such a fight since the day our peculiar case together began, the two locked in combat, clawing and punching as bestially as they could before Sebastian, Todd and I, adding our own shouts of shock and protest, scarcely tore them apart. 

But it was Mr. Marrow who truly pacified the bitter foes, still standing there long-faced in the foyer, wringing his hands.  "_You be quiet now_! _All o'you_!"  he wailed, stamping his great foot and catching us all aghast.  His scream was grievous, like the cry of a child bereft of its only parent.  Indeed, it was precisely that—desperate for an end to some silent suffering. 

            O'Toole, the shortest of us, dodged underneath the struggling mass of we five men, and went to Smiley with one stout hand rested on his shivering arm.  "Smiley?" he queried cautiously, with the tenderness of a brother. 

But the gawky lad was beyond his comfort, so furious had he become.  In his chattering, his country accent made his speech all but indiscernible.  "Mr. Holmes, Professor, you stand 'ere screamin' and shouting and bringing up old quarrels, beatin' each other wi' your words like so many bobbies wi' their clubs . . an'. . . well, JesusMaryn'Joseph, like Mrs. Hudson were some bloody golden cup at the finishin' line o' some race!"  he whimpered. "Instead . . . instead o' _Sleepin' Beauty_!"

            "Smiley, please."  Suddenly Moriarty exemplified grace, stepping forward and reaching for the arm opposite of that clasped by Todd.  The expression of concern and regret on his face, to me, seemed startlingly paternal.  "It's alright, now, don't—"

"No, Professor!" The youth jerked free of their grasp.  "I know you think I'm but a plain an' simple mind, but, sir, even _I_ can recognize when a man ain't done his best by a woman, an' now is that time for _both_ o' you!" He sniffed gruffly, and hastily wiped his nose.  It mattered little, for tears were streaming freely down his long face.  "Mrs. Hudson ain't benefittin' from all this shoutin' and ill will, but you don't _care_, do ye?!"

"Of course we care, Mr. Marrow," Holmes injected as mildly as possible, smoothing his tousled hair and straightening his nightshirt.  "We would not have come to blows had this been a moot issue for us both." He drew his pipe from his pocket and gave it an emphatic puff, scowling, and began to pace the floor to calm himself.  Uncertain as to my most useful employ, I trailed his steps. 

            "An' that's just it, sir!"  Smiley moaned, turning to my restless companion.  "It's between the both o' _you, _not for _her_.  Wouldn't matter _who _she was so long as one of you _won_!  Wouldn't matter if she were trampled under your feet so long as one of you got his revenge at last, eh?!  Me mother . . . me mother, G-God rest her, she knew that a man cared less for her than for himself far too _late_, an' that man left us high and dry when I were six years old, and I won't see such disgrace happenin' to any _other _fine young lady!"

            "Smiley, shut up," Todd mumbled, shaking his friend's arm.  "The Professor already _knows _all that—_he's_ the one what put you and your mum up in room and board for your service when he were teachin' at the university." 

            "What's this?" I murmured, dumbfounded by this sliver of Good Samaritanism from the wicked Moriarty. 

Holmes and I together turned to observe the Professor's face; the criminal stared stoically out the window, fists clenched, and as Todd spoke, his eyes slid ashamedly shut, confirming it.  "Smiley, I'm sorry," he said, flatly. "I forgot myself for a moment. It will not happen again." Then his tone darkened, and he leveled the youth with a sharp glare, the light off his monocle blinding under the nearby oil lamp.  "Seems all I'm doing tonight is apologizing to people.  _Never_ doubt, however, my very real affection for the lady in question."

"Or mine," Holmes added, jabbing his pipe in Marrow's direction.  "Thank you for the enlightenment, Smiley.  It has reminded me of a crucial line in Sir Walter Scott's novel Ivanoe." 

" 'Love wants for the beloved,' " Sebastian cut in gently, smiling, just when the detective was poised to recite the phrase.  He winked at us. 

Holmes blinked at him, then his eyebrows rose.  "Precisely," he said, glancing sidelong, with the colonel, at Moriarty—the mutual source of their knowledge of the quotation.  The Professor appraised Holmes with mild shock and approval.

Moriarty's tallest lackey fell silent, shoved his hands into his jacket pockets, and nodded.  His face flushed.  "Yessir," he mumbled.  "I understand."

The sound of a woman freshly crying upstairs, in Holmes's study, chastised us all.  Moriarty heard it better than any of us; his face had never looked, to my recollection, so deeply disturbed. 

"Maybe we should go home for a spot," Todd suggested softly.  "At least for tonight, to give the lady her . . . space."

"Excellent idea, Todd," Sebastian chirped, grabbing their coats and flinging them to their respective owners.  He glanced sidelong at me and gulped. 

"Wouldn't do any harm," I offered, trying to help. 

With that they all trailed out the open door.  All except the Professor.

He paused in the doorway, long fingers trembling as he picked a daisy from the vase which Mrs. Hudson so lovingly tended each morning.  Slowly, in a bizarre gesture that mingled maliciousness and remorse, he turned to approach my companion, and in each step, ripped a petal from the sun-tinted bloom. "Win, lose, win, lose, win, lose, there's _our_ game, Mr. Holmes, yours and mine: our torturous little chess game," he murmured, in a voice that was freakishly devoid of tone, pitch, or emotion.  Flat, but quavering—like his hand.  A thin sheen of despair fell over eyes that were usually but hollow holes—shrouds hiding his innermost self.  Now any measure of concealing that self, in that bottomless stare, was gone, and Holmes and I saw clearly into the deep dark abyss of Professor Moriarty's soul.  It was disturbing—but not entirely what we expected.  For there was pain there:  pain and countlessly maimed pride.  Finally the last petal fell from the flower, of its own accord, and it slipped from Professor Moriarty's hand, to the floor. "And the part _I_ play?"  The criminal watched the petal flutter against Holmes's foot, its resting spot.  "The _Loser_.  Every damned time . . . Christ _God_, sir," he moaned in the face of his sole equal—his antithesis and his soul mate, all in one man—and was, in that split instant, desperately humbled. "Is there nothing, _nothing _in this bloody_ world, _that we _both _might pursue that _I_ at last might have?  Just _once_, Mr. Holmes?"

The detective and criminal faced each other so closely that the fiber of a dove's feather could not have come between them.  Their twin gray pairs of eyes were locked, intensely, in mutual scrutiny.  Holmes was considering the appeal of his peer.  Either that, or ready to initiate another boxing match: Moriarty's face as his target. 

I felt my throat struggling to force words of incredulity, or moderation.  None came, aside those that were incoherent gurgles.  I looked wildly to Holmes, who ground his jaw behind his lips, still somewhere indiscernibly between a point of enraged explosion and grace.  At last he mumbled, "I don't think that _either_ of us can '_win_' Marie Hudson, Professor.  I think you and I both know that the decision is up to _her_."

"Of _course_ I know that."  Moriarty whetted his lips and sighed; it bought him time to reign in his shamelessly strewn emotions.  When he spoke again, the earnestness in his gaze was lost, and his shady ambiguity had returned.  "That wasn't what I . . .Holmes.  Do you love her?"

"I . . ."  Holmes swallowed back a definitive response, realizing that he had none.  He was lost.  Suddenly, he became the young, fresh schoolboy again, Moriarty his mentor, guiding his prodigal, wide-eyed pupil through a particularly challenging math equation. "I do not know."

"Well_, I_ know how _I _feel for her, Mr. Holmes.  There is no name for it, but it is _strong_ and it is _certain_."  The quivering in Moriarty's fingers had spread to his whole body.  But he never again allowed his face to betray whatever was churning inside him.  "You cannot give her that.  And _why_?  Simple, lad.  There is someone else for whom _you_ feel with certainty.  And you are so _afraid_ of it that you've been substituting her with the _safer_, more impossible alternative, the widowed landlady to whom _you _are little more than a cousin or a brother.  You _know_ who the _real _object of your affections is.  I have seen it.  It is so obvious, Holmes_, to everybody but you_.  You know _I'm right_ . . . _this_ time.  Checkmate, checkmate. _This_ time _I win_."  Out of breath at last, Moriarty clutched a sweat-dampened forehead and stepped back, lips thinned and ears drooped, allowing his sparring partner some space.  For Holmes had gone very pale indeed.

I put my hand on my peculiar companion's back, patting his shoulder once.  "You alright, old boy?" I asked the worthless question, if only to communicate that I supported him, even in my abashment.  But I was invisible to them both, in that moment. 

The clock struck 4 am.  Outside, early birds and pigeons sang on the London roofs, breaking the silence of the night, deceiving the listener's perception of time and state. 

Still the lamps in the streets and flats flickered. 

Still it was cold. 

 " . . . Good evening, Professor," my friend at last rasped, retreating with roving eyes into his study.  He did not look back once.  I saw him reach for the cocaine needle in the bookcase, that monstrosity that I had tried so hard in vain to hide from him, just before the door slammed in our faces.

Moriarty, as he pivoted, cape lashing, heeded just as little about the world around him as his foe did.  "Good _morning_, Mr. Holmes," he breathed, with a strange and shuddering laugh, and fled outside.  The wind was bitter behind him, for he left the door flung open; alone and confused in the dim gaslight, I hastened to close it.  But I was still freezing. 

Still the early birds sang.


End file.
